CHE seniors display innovation, creativity at Engineering Expo

Seniors in the Department of Chemical Engineering showcased their education and determination at the annual UIC College of Engineering Expo in April with projects focused on sustainability, innovation, and renewable energy.

These seniors not only presented at the arena during the Expo but also showed off their work to both mentors and alumni judges in the Senior Design Showcase at the Engineering Innovation Building earlier in the day.

Seniors Aaron Casas, Adil Feratovic, Joshua Laforest, Hussein Rezk, and Christian Rojas aimed for the stars while looking for inspiration. Their project, named Starbound, focused on transforming biomass into rocket fuel.

As rocket launches increase due to industry growth and expansion, so do the greenhouse gas emissions that come from petroleum refining, the current fuel source for the industry.

So the team developed a simulated chemical plant design, where wood chips from the abundant feedstock supply in California would be used to create rocket fuel.

Rojas said that as one of the largest lumber producers in the country, California also provides incentives for sustainable fuel production. “California is one of the pioneers in sustainable fuels,” he said. “If we can generate less emissions than the standard process, we generate these tax credits through clean energy projects and then we can sell them to other refineries or other companies in California to make up another industry. On top of that, we also have low carbon fuel.”

As global emissions and greenhouse gases grow, efforts have increased to decarbonize the environment and transform CO₂ to valuable products.

Throughout their Senior Design course, Hiba Naqvi, Angelica Ramirez, and Javier Silva created a simulated plant that transformed CO₂ from waste to a valuable product to accelerate global decarbonization goals and provide a viable solution for industrial emitters.

Their process included taking CO₂, converting it to methanol, then upgrading the methanol into polymer-grade olefins using molecules-to-olefins (MTO) and advanced purification steps. Olefins are unsaturated hydrocarbons and are essential building blocks of plastics, rubber, and other synthetic materials.

More specifically, the team created butene, ethylene, and propylene—which are commonly used in petrochemical manufacturing to produce plastics and highly elastic polymers.

The group focused on reducing costs and resource use through optimizing energy, water, and hydrogen utilization, and reactor performance. They also aimed to shift from selling products to eventually offer CO₂ reduction services, which would generate a stable revenue through contracts and scalability and increase value through integration of polymer production, allowing them to expand strategically and optimize feedstock and production costs.

Approximately 165 trillion metric tons of CO₂ per year is produced from aviation alone.

Seniors Joshua Olusoji and Omar Zaruk’s project focused on creating a path toward cleaner skies through renewable jet fuel.

The team focused on developing a sustainable pathway for producing aviation fuel from ethanol. The group chose to use ethanol because it is a flexible feedstock that can be derived from corn, sugar, or waste. It has high fuel selectivity—using up to 80% of hydrocarbons produced are in the jet fuel range, a clean process that does not produce char, tar, or other hard to handle co-products. It is also commercially proven, as the process has recently been commercialized and is standardized ASTM International industrial protocols certified by LanzaJet.

The team simulated using ethanol dehydration to produce ethylene, followed by oligomerization to form higher olefins. Oligomerization is a chemical or biological process that links a few repeating structural units (monomers) together to create a finite macromolecule called an oligomer.

They then used hydrogenation to turn the olefins into paraffins, and finally hydrocracking and isomerization to meet jet fuel range molecules and ASTM industrial specifications. Hydrogenation helps to convert heavy feedstocks into lighter, high-value products while hydrocracking is a refining process that combines the breaking of heavy hydrocarbon molecules with hydrogenation. These processes help to reduce boiling points and molecular weight while removing contaminants, using bifunctional catalysts under high pressure and temperature.

The project used integrated concepts from Honeywell UOP and LanzaJet.

Olusoji and Zaruk’s project received an award from the annual Senior Design Expo.

They also received an award from the Senior Design Showcase, where the first place $500 award was sponsored by AthenaVisual, the second place $400 award was sponsored by Net Energy, and third place $300 award was sponsored by Honeywell UOP.

The following awards from the CHE Senior Showcase were given at the annual Chemical Engineering Department banquet:

• Third Place: From CO₂ Emissions to Olefins – Hiba Naqvi, Angelica Ramirez, and Javier Silva
• Second Place: Fluoro Dynamics Specialty Materials – Ahmed Alhassani, Kyle Hankosky, Kendall Johnson, Lindsey Meisch, and Khoa Nguyen
• First Place: Cleaner Fuel, Cleaner Skies: Ethanol to Jet Fuel – Joshua Olusoji and Omar Zaruk