Become a future leader of the Net Zero Process Industries
IN PARTNERSHIP
WITH
WHAT WE DO
The EPSRC Centre for Doctoral Training in Process Industries: Net Zero (PINZ CDT) is a collaboration between the Process Intensification Group at Newcastle University and the Green Chemistry Centre of Excellence at the University of York.
ABOUT US
To realise Net Zero, the process industries will fundamentally change the way they handle energy, feedstocks, and data. Gradual change is not enough; order-of-magnitude improvements in efficiency and environmental impact are required.
In the UK alone, there are 500,000 new low-carbon jobs expected in the next decade. With more than 20 global industrial partners, the PINZ CDT will train the architects and leaders of the process industries’ transition to Net Zero.
By bringing together diverse expertise from academia, industry, and beyond, we foster an environment of interdisciplinary synergy, where ideas flourish and solutions are born.
Join our PhD training programme and become a future leader of the Process Industries’ Net Zero transition
From SMEs to multi-national brand names, our industrial partners are united in their vision of a Net Zero process industry.
With more than 20 industrial partners at launch in 2024, we cover a broad range of the process industries: from bulk and fine chemicals to food and beverages, pharmaceuticals, manufacturing, utilities and more.
RESEARCH THEMES
The Three Themes
The use of renewable electricity and hydrogen will demand new ways to perform process steps, including reactions, separations, and heat transfer, as well as whole process design. Here, electrically driven chemistry will offer new flexibility and modularity for reactions and separations, whilst direct electrical heating will offer significant cost and energy savings.
Hydrogen will also become both a chemical feedstock and a vector for heat supply, whilst plasma-, light-, and sono-driven chemistries will, in some cases, replace the need for heat entirely.
New, more sustainable feedstocks will force the development of new process chemistries and technologies. Increasingly, these new feedstocks will be bio-based, carbon-neutral, and waste-derived, in the drive towards a circular economy.
Whether this is the currently under-valorised components of lignocellulosic biomass, or the utilisation of captured carbon dioxide as a feedstock, there are opportunities for efficient, coupled separation and reaction processes. The close collaboration of leading chemists and chemical engineers is needed to realise these opportunities in industry.
In the future net zero process industries, research and commercial decisions will often be based on environmental, economic, social, and overall sustainability indicators. Here, the increasing quantity and quality of life-cycle and techno-economic data will dramatically change how we design, operate, and monitor processes from the unit operation to the plant and cluster scale. Furthermore, processes will be increasingly data-rich, so will require appropriately skilled engineers and chemists to design and operate them.
industrial partners
CONTACT
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Apply now for our fully-funded PhD training programme and become a future leader of the Process Industries’ Net Zero transition #PhDposition #PhD #PhDfunding #AcademicTwitter #AcademicLife #PhDchat #PhDforum #PhDlife #NetZero
In @PINZ_CDT, every PhD student will have an industrial co-supervisor! We are delighted to have 25 industrial partners on board! See below for more information about some of our partners, and if you’re interested to join, get in touch!