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Professor of Chemical Engineering
Biography
Prof Mazzei graduated in Chemical Engineering from the University of Naples "Federico II" in 2001. Then, he spent three years working for Technip KTI as process and start up engineer on sulphur recovery and refinery tail gas treatment. In 2004, he joined the Department of Chemical Engineering at UCL as PhD student, becoming lecturer in 2009. Prof Mazzei is a Member of the Institution of Chemical Engineers (MIChemE), a Chartered Scientist (CSci) and a member of the IChemE Particle Technology Special Interest Group Committee.
Teaching Summary
I am particularly interested in teaching students to think critically and use as much as possible the classical methods of chemical engineering – based on dimensional analysis, order of magnitude analysis and scaling – to rapidly gain insight into physical and chemical processes without resorting to complex mathematics or numerical methods. Being able to pose the right questions, employ a correct methodology to find the answers, and quickly estimate the essential features characterizing a process are crucial skills that I try to develop in students. My departmental teaching activities are mainly in the areas of transport phenomena and fluidization.
Modules currently taught:
- CENG0019 Transport Phenomena II
- CENG0024 Fluid-Particle Systems
Research Summary
My research focuses on multiphase systems, particularly fluid-particle suspensions. These systems pose major challenges in the development of new technologies as well as in process design and optimization. To address these challenges, my work combines theory, simulations and experiments to acquire fundamental knowledge of the systems and processes investigated and to apply it to support technological innovation, improve productivity and reduce environmental impact.
Initially, my research focused on fluidization. My work naturally progressed towards other challenging areas of academic and industrial relevance, such as crystallization, nanoparticle synthesis, and the formulation of oral health products with complex rheology.
My modelling work is strongly grounded on the theory of transport phenomena. This has allowed me to broaden my research to new areas of application, in the heritage field (for instance, to investigate the behaviour of particulate matter in heritage environments and the degradation of plastic objects in museum collections) and in the area of high-performance liquid chromatography.
Awards
2018
UCL Education Award, UCL
Education
2008
PhD, Chemical Engineering, University College London, UK
2001
Laurea, Chemical Engineering, University of Naples “Federico II”, Italy
Professional Affiliations
- MIChemE – member of IChemE
- FHEA – member of HEA
- CSci – chartered scientist
Publications
- R. Jamshidi, J.J.J. Gillissen, P. Angeli, L. Mazzei, Roles of solid effective stress and fluid-particle interaction force in modeling shear-induced particle migration in non-Brownian suspensions, Phys. Rev. Fluids, 6, 014301 (2021).
- R. Jamshidi, P. Angeli, L. Mazzei, On the closure problem of the effective stress in the Eulerian-Eulerian and mixture modeling approaches for the simulation of liquid-particle suspensions, Phys. Fluids, 31, 013302 (2019).
- E. Agunloye, L. Panariello, A. Gavriilidis, L. Mazzei. A model for the formation of gold nanoparticles in the citrate synthesis method. Chem. Eng. Sci., 191, 318-331 (2018).
- D. Rossi, R. Jamshidi, N. Saffari, S. Kuhn, A. Gavriilidis, L. Mazzei, Continuous-flow sonocrystallization in droplet-based microfluidics. Cryst. Growth Des., 15, 5519-5529 (2015).
- L. Mazzei, Limitations of quadrature-based moment methods for modeling inhomogeneous polydisperse fluidized powders, Chem. Eng. Sci., 66, 3628-3640 (2011).