XClose

UCL Department of Chemical Engineering

Home
Menu
Dr. Massimiliano Materazzi

Dr. Massimiliano Materazzi

Principal Research Fellow

Dept of Chemical Engineering

Faculty of Engineering Science

Joined UCL
1st Nov 2012

Research summary

Massimiliano has been leading research in Bioenergy and Biofuels at UCL since 2015. His research focuses on the major sustainability challenges contextualised by UCL’s Grand Challenges and the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) to achieve higher resource efficiency with sustainable, environmentally responsible production. He does so by bridging fundamental knowledge on particle technologies and catalysis with the engineering design and scale-up of advanced technologies for sustainable applications, underpinning this with techno-economic analysis and commercial assessment. Main areas of research include:

1) Advanced thermal treatments (incineration, gasification, pyrolysis, plasma) for conversion of biomass and wastes into renewable energy and biofuels, including hydrogen for transport and sustainable aviation fuels (SAF);

2) Novel Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS) technologies for reducing impact of industries; 

3) Design and operation criteria of industrial reactors for Sustainable Manufacturing;

4) Technological, economic and environmental aspects of the different recycling and recovery routes (mechanical recycling, chemical recycling and energy recovery) of plastic waste;

5) Integration and optimization of Food-Energy-Water nexus to foster collective resilience in urban-rural systems;

6) Application of Life Cycle Assessment and Material Flow Analysis as tools for environmental assessment of waste management planning and optimization.

His research is supported by sustained funding from Industry, Charity, Engineering Physical Science Research Council (EPSRC), Energy Technology Institute (ETI), Innovate UK, Department for Transport and BEIS. In 2018 he received the prestigious 5-year RAEng Research Fellowship to advance thermochemical technologies for biofuel synthesis. His early results have contributed to the construction of the first 5MW Waste-to-Fuel plant in the UK (Swindon), funded by the Department for Transport (DfT), which will start operation in 2022. The same project has granted his team 3 IChemE Global Awards (2018), in Energy, Sustainability and Outstanding Achievement in Chemical Engineering, providing worldwide visibility to his research. 

Teaching summary

CENG0016/24:Fluid Particle Systems 

Education

University College London
Doctorate, Doctor of Philosophy | 2015
Other higher degree, Master of Science | 2011
First Degree, Bachelor of Science | 2008

Biography

Massimiliano obtained a PhD in 2015 from UCL working in collaboration with the UK company Advanced Plasma Power (APP), for the development of innovative Waste-to-Fuel solutions. Before moving to academic research, he has worked almost 10 years in the Waste-to-Energy industry as Process Engineer and R&D director. He joined the Department of Chemical Engineering at UCL as independent Senior Research Fellow (2016), after one year of full time teaching (2015). Since then, he has been co-leading the UCL Fluidization Research Group, one of the oldest in the UK and most renowned world-wide, and established a new strand of research on Bioenergy and Biofuels. In 2018 he was awarded a prestigious 5-year Royal Academy of Engineering Research Fellowship to advance his research on biofuels. Massimiliano is a Chartered Engineer (CEng) of IChemE and Fellow of the Higher Education Academy (FHEA)
Publications