Career

Newcastle University

Polymer manufacturing is highly energy intensive, and achieving net zero requires more than fuel switching. This project focuses on process systems engineering for industrial decarbonisation, specifically reducing intrinsic energy demand in polymer production through process redesign, integration, and intensification.

The project is conducted in collaboration with Victrex, a global leader in high-performance polymers, and is based at Newcastle Universitywithin the EPSRC CDT in Process Industries: Net Zero (PINZ).

Project Aim

To develop quantitative process systems engineering methods and models to identify, evaluate, and enable step-change reductions in energy consumption in industrial polymer manufacturing through system-level process redesign.

Core Research Focus

You will develop and apply advanced modelling and analysis tools to:

• Construct high-resolution energy and mass balance models of industrial polymer processes
• Identify key sources of thermodynamic and operational inefficiency
• Quantify opportunities for heat integration, energy recovery, and process optimisation
• Develop and evaluate alternative process configurations and plant architectures
• Investigate process intensification and advanced separations for reduced-energy operation
• Assess techno-economic trade-offs: energy vs cost vs operability vs scalability

The project explicitly moves beyond incremental optimisation towards fundamental redesign of industrial process systems.

Industrial Collaboration (Victrex): You will work closely with Victrex engineering teams, including access to the Hillhouse manufacturing site.

This provides exposure to:

• Real industrial process data
• Large-scale polymer production systems
• Operational constraints and engineering decision-making
• Direct pathways for translation of research into industrial practice

The project is strongly aligned with industrial decarbonisation and real-world deployment.

Apply here