Education: B.S., Chemical Engineering, University of Virginia
Ph.D., University of Delaware
Thesis topic: Molecular-level Kinetic Modeling of Municipal Solid Waste Gasification
Thesis description: The yearly generation of municipal solid waste (MSW) in the United States reached 249.9 million tons in 2010. Waste-to-energy technologies allow us to both reduce landfill storage and recover energy from MSW. Incineration, the most common waste-to-energy technique, has environmental issues due to emissions(SOx and NOx) and a toxic ash by-product. Plasma-arc gasification has both lower emissions and the final by-product is non-toxic due to the extreme temperatures of operation. The goal of my thesis is to develop a molecular-level kinetic model of the plasma-arc gasification of MSW in order to understand the underlying physical phenomena in this process.
Recent presentations:
Oral presentations:
Horton SR, Bennett CA, Zhang Y, Petrocelli FP, Klein MT. “Automating Molecular Modeling of Gasification with the Kinetic Modeler’s Toolbox”. AICHE National Meeting 2012, Pittsburgh, PA.
Poster Presentations:
Horton SR, Bennett CA, Zhang Y, Petrocelli FP, Klein MT. “Molecular-level Kinetic Modeling of MSW Gasification”. Fraunhofer – Delaware Technology Summit. Newark, DE. March 5, 2013.
Google Scholar profile: http://scholar.google.com/citations?user=ZrIiTLoAAAAJ&hl=en