Award summary
The studentship provides 100% fees (Home UK only), a minimum tax-free annual living allowance of £20,780 (2025/26 UKRI rate), and a research training support grant of £20,000.
Overview
In this project, novel laboratory-scale continuous “flow chemistry” reactors will be designed and 3d-printed, and applied to a variety of real reactions from industry, currently performed in batch, to demonstrate “process intensification” and rapid, scalable process development/optimisation.
Previous work in the area by theProcess Intensification Grouphas demonstrated that many batch processes can be made significantly “greener” via this method of process development. One recent example is a 200-fold reduction in reactor size while removing an organic solvent altogether, whilst maintaining productivity and improving yield/selectivity etc. We expect to achieve similar results with our current reactions, leading to huge reductions in carbon footprint, to help the process industries move towards Net Zero. Our 3d printing approach is highly flexible, meaning the impact of this work will be potentially far-reaching.
This project is part of the Process Industries: Net Zero (PINZ) Centre for Doctoral training. The aim of thePINZ CDTis to train the next generation of chemical engineers, and chemists, to develop the new processes, process technologies and green chemistries required for the process industries’ transition to Net Zero.
Number of awards: 1
Start date: 15th September 2025
Award duration: 4 years
Sponsor: EPSRC
Supervisors: Prof. Adam HarveyandDr Jonathan McDonough
Eligibility criteria
You must have, or expect to gain, a minimum 2:1 Honours degree in a subject relevant to the proposed PhD project (usually chemical engineering or chemistry, or equivalent industrial experience but please get in touch if you think your qualification may be relevant). Enthusiasm for research, the ability to think and work independently, excellent analytical skills and strong verbal and written communication skills are also essential requirements.
Home applicants are eligible to apply and if successful will receive a full studentship.
How to apply
Once registered select‘Create a Postgraduate Application’.
Use ‘Course Search’ to identify your programme of study:
- Search for the ‘Course Title’ using the programme code:8856F.
- Leave the ‘Research Area’ field blank
- Select‘PhD in Process Industries; Net Zero (PINZ’) as the programme of study.
You will then need to provide the following information in the ‘Further Details’ section:
- A ‘Personal Statement’ (this is a mandatory field) - upload a document or write a statement directly in to the application form.
- The studentship codePINZ11-25in the ‘Studentship/Partnership Reference’ field
- ‘Research Proposal’ - when prompted for how you are providing your research proposal – select ‘Write Proposal’. You should then type in the title of the research project from this advert. You do not need to upload a research proposal.
Contact details:
General enquiries:pinz.cdt@ncl.ac.uk
£20,780 - please see advert
