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WELCOME TO THE PROCESS SYSTEMS ENGINEERING LABORATORY AT MIT

The Process Systems Engineering Laboratory at MIT is conducting a broad program of research related to modeling, simulation, optimization and design of large-scale dynamic systems. Applications are drawn from the traditional chemical process industries, and from less traditional areas such as pharmaceutical and biochemical processes, micro-scale chemical processes, signaling in biological systems, complex chemical reaction mechanisms such as those in combustion systems, nuclear hydrogen generation, design of OLED displays and natural gas production, distribution and processing networks. Our research interests and contributions include hybrid (discrete/continuous) dynamic systems; design and modeling of complex distillation systems; numerical analysis of ordinary differential, differential-algebraic and partial differential-algebraic equations; sensitivity analysis and automatic differentiation; pollution prevention in process design; mixed-integer and dynamic optimization theory and algorithms; process safety analysis; open process modeling software.


PSEL in the News

July 2008 - Paul I. Barton and N. Selvakumar of Thermax Ltd., India receive the 2008 Indo-American Frontiers of Engineering Award from the Indo-US Science and Technology Forum in partnership with the National Academy of Engineering for "Studies on Transport Gasifier for High Ash Coal with use of Oxygen Carriers for Economic CO2 Separation and Reduced Overall Plant Cost."

September 2007 - BP-MIT partnership to focus on energy conversion technologies. PSEL@MIT will work on optimal integrated design and operation of advanced conversion processes with carbon sequestration. MIT News Office

November 2006 - Model of the Sarawak natural gas production system developed by Ajay Selot and Paul I. Barton is featured in the news. Reuters MIT News Office Tech Talk

April 2006 - Paul I. Barton and Cha Kun Lee receive The Best Paper Award 2004 for the paper "Design of Process Operations using Hybrid Dynamic Optimization" published in Computers and Chemical Engineering. Vol. 28, Issue 6-7, pp. 955-969 in 2004. Computers and Chemical Engineering

April 2006 - Research by Ajay Selot and Paul I. Barton on Natural Gas Supply Chain Management is featured in an article published in the newsletter of MIT's Laboratory for Energy and the Environment (LFEE).

December 2005 - Nuclear energy projects get $2M in DOE grants. PSEL@MIT will develop the framework for Dynamic Simulation and Optimization of Nuclear Hydrogen Production Systems.
MIT News Office               Description of project in DOE NERI's website

August 2004 - Paul I. Barton Wins The AIChE CAST Outstanding Young Researcher Award.
MIT ChemE News               CAST website


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Web site last updated by Brian Simpson (bms at mit dot edu), July 14, 2008.