Email
agdixon@wpi.edu
Office
Goddard Hall 224A
Phone
+1 (508) 8315000 x5350
Lab Links
Heat and Mass Transfer Lab
Education
B.Sc. University of Edinburgh, UK 1975
Ph.D University of Edinburgh, UK 1978

My research is in the general area of reaction engineering and energy, in particular steam reforming and hydrogen production. A strong component of this work is the use of scientific computing methods to investigate transport and reaction in chemical reactors and porous media. Scholarly work is currently being carried out in the following areas: computational fluid dynamics (CFD) studies of fluid flow through beds of particles, heat transfer in structured fixed-bed reactors, parametric analysis of nonisothermal behavior in inorganic membrane reactors, diffusion and reaction in microporous inorganic membranes and their use as membrane reactors, simulation of microchemical reactors using direct simulation Monte Carlo (DSMC) methods, and the study of pseudospectral (collocation) methods for the solution of differential equations. I also participate in educational scholarship, involving engineering education, teaching, and learning, with particular interest in the use of mathematics and computing within the chemical engineering curriculum.

Research Interests
chemical reaction engineering
energy-related reactor modeling and design
computational fluid dynamics and mathematical modeling
novel catalyst pellet design and performance
heat transfer in chemical reactors
inorganic membrane reactors

Scholarly Work

Stitt, E.H., Marigo, M., Wilkinson, S. and Dixon, A.G., How Good is Your Model? “Just because the results are in color − it doesn’t mean they are right”, Johnson Matthey Technol. Rev., 59, 74-89 (2015)

Partopour, B. and Dixon, A.G., Computationally Efficient Incorporation of Microkinetics into Resolved-particle CFD Simulations of Fixed-bed Reactors, Comp. Chem. Eng., 88, 126-134 (2016)

Ma, R., Castro-Dominguez, B., Mardilovich, I.P., Dixon, A.G. and Ma, Y.H., Experimental and Simulation Studies of the Production of Renewable Hydrogen through Ethanol Steam Reforming in a Pilot-Scale Catalytic Membrane Reactor, Chem. Eng. J., 303, 302-313 (2016)

Partopour, B. and Dixon, A.G., Reduced Microkinetics Model for Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) Simulation of the Fixed-Bed Partial Oxidation of Ethylene, Ind. Eng. Chem. Res., 55, 7296-7306 (2016)

Castro-Dominguez, B., Mardilovich, I.P., Ma, R., Kazantzis, N.K., Dixon, A.G. and Ma, Y.H., Performance of a Pilot-scale Multitube Membrane Module under Coal-derived Syngas for Hydrogen Production and Separation, J. Membrane Sci., 523, 515-523 (2017)

Partopour, B. and Dixon, A.G., Resolved-particle Fixed Bed CFD with Microkinetics for Ethylene Oxidation, AIChE J., 63, 85-94 (2017)

Professional Affiliations
American Institute of Chemical Engineers (AIChE)
American Chemical Society (ACS)
Institute of Mathematics and its Applications (IMA)
American Society for Engineering Education (ASEE)
Professional Highlights & Honors
, 2001
American Society for Engineering Education Chemical Engineering Division
, 2008
American Institute of Chemical Engineers

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