Eric Suuberg
Professor:
Engineering
Phone: +1 401 863 1420
Eric_Suuberg@Brown.EDU
Professor Suuberg's research interests center on
energy and environmental ares, involving study of fuel chemistry (coal, oil shale, biomass), activated carbons (production and properties), materials reuse (automobile tires, coal fly ash), fire safety and, most recently, the characterization and cleanup of lands and sediments contaminated with mixed pollutants with a focus on thermodynamics of mixtures of high molecular weight organic compounds and the related problem of vapor intrusion.
Biography
Professor Suuberg has been at Brown since 1981, when he was one of the founding members of Brown's Chemical Engineering program. His research interests have been in the areas of energy and environmental engineering. He has served as Associate Dean of the Faculty (2002-2005), as Chair of the Psychology Department (2004-5) and as a member of the Executive Committee of the Division of Engineering. He is currently Co-Director of the Superfund Basic Research Program, and a co-founder of the COE concentration as well as a co-founder of the new masters Program in Innovation Management and Entrepreneurship (PRIME). He is a principal editor of the journal Fuel.
Interests
Professor Suuberg's research interests revolve around the chemical kinetics and thermodynamics, particularly in relation to the fields of energy and environmental technology. At the present time, his group is exploring the thermodynamics of mixtures of high molecular weight organic compounds (including polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, PAH, and other polycyclic aromatic compounds, PAC). Few data exist on vapor pressures of these materials, which constitute an important class of compounds of environmental concern. In addition to addressing the need for more data on this topic, the Suuberg group is looking at what sorts of mixing models will adequately describe the thermodynamics of mixtures of these compounds. Because many of these compounds are present as contaminants on Superfund sites or brownfields, the work extends to examination of how these materials interact with soils and water, including any adsorption interactions. This group is also using their understanding of soil contamination to develop new ways of characterizing the vapor intrusion problem. The latter problem of infiltration of contaminant vapors into structures is of greatly increasing national concern when it comes to reuse of contaminated lands.
In addition to the latter area, the Suuberg group has been involved in applications including combustion of coal, production of alternative (green) fuels, fire safety and pollution prevention. Recently the work led to examination of novel sources of carbon materials (coal fly ash, automobile tires) for environmental applications, with implications for resource recycling. Gas-solid reactions of combustion and gasification interest are another major focus of Professor Suuberg's research interests. The kinetics of the annealing process in carbons, characterized by their loss of gasification reactivity, is related to the distributed activation energy kinetics of pyrolysis. The origin of the fractional order in such gas-solid reactions, the nature of active site distributions and their implications for kinetic modeling of the reaction processes are all questions of current interest in the field. Also, the development of porosity in ""activation"" of carbon is of interest. This work looks at the combustion reaction itself, as well as the environmentally important NO reduction process.
Degrees
Sc.D. in Chemical Engineering, MIT
Awards
2008- Honorary Doctorate, Tallinn University of Technology
2000-2001 - Fulbright Scholar, Tallinn University of Technology, Estonia
2000-pres. Principal Editor, FUEL (an international journal of fuels chemistry)
1999- H.H. Storch Award for Research in Fuel Chemistry, American Chemical Society
1995 - Vice Chancellor's Research Best Practice Fellow, University of Newcastle, Australia
Affiliations
American Chemical Society
American Carbon Society
The Combustion Institute
American Institute of Chemical Engineers
American Society for Engineering Education
Air and Waste Management Association
Teaching
Professor Suuberg has taught subjects in both engineering as well as business-related areas. As a co-founder of Brown's chemical engineering program, he has played a role in developing new undergraduate courses in transport processes, chemical process design, chemical and phase equilibria, energy conversion, and pollution prevention. On the graduate level, he has developed courses on polymer science and engineering and combustion. More recently, he has been involved in developing Brown's new sequence in Entrepreneurship, and participated in the development of the new Commerce, Organizations and Entrepreneurship concentration, as well as the new PRIME program in Engineering.
Curriculum Vitae
