Interested applicants please write in to:
Yashodhan Bhawe, PhD
Research Director
Ville Holdings Pte Ltd
yash008@villeholdings.com
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Description:
Position: Research Lab Intern at Ville Holdings Pte Ltd.
Punchline: Catalyst testing for implementation in the oleochemical industry
Timeline: 6 months, with option to extend / get a permanent position upon review.
Company Background:
Ville Holdings Pte Ltd is a holding company that holds interests in a number of small scale chemical plants in Asia, including our latest facility which is undergoing commissioning on Jurong Island. We focus on downstream oleochemical conversions for food and feed applications. At this juncture, we have started exploring further avenues to grow our business through R&D.
R&D Background:
The R&D department will focus on adding value to the main and byproducts in the palm oil processing through catalysis. While fundamental understanding is key, the research being done will be application driven. The unique opportunity in this internship is that upon successful labscale trials, there are opportunities to continue process development through the pilotting and implementation scales through our production units and contacts in Malaysia, Indonesia and India. The focus of the research will be catalyst synthesis and reaction testing, and analysis of reaction results.
Successful applicants will focus on the latter two aspects of the research programme. They will be expected to understand fundamentals of reaction engineering - the effects of pressure, temperature, catalyst, component concentrations on kinetics of reactions. These results will be filtered back to redesign catalysts (done by me) to be able to get better reactivity.
Dr Yashodhan Bhawe’s Background
Initially, the lab will be a small operation, but as we start expanding into pilot, and commercial scale trials, the outfit will undoubtedly grow. Thus it would be important for the intern to appreciate my background, and what I am looking for.
I did my
1-12th education locally, in Singapore. I got my undergraduate degree (in ChE) from UC Berkeley. I then moved down the state to Caltech for my MS and my PhD. My focus for my PhD has been on the synthesis of reactive solid materials. I looked at stoichiometrically reactive materials for thermochemical water splitting, and thermochemical carbon dioxide reduction. I also synthesized and studied catalytically reactive materials for a variety of hydrocarbon based reactions: methanol-to-olefins chemistry, short chain aliphatic oligomerization, sugar isomerization and epimerization.
Thus, I will be primarily focussed on synthesizing the catalytic materials that we would like to test, and with input from the intern, design better catalysts for the processes we are trying to improve. I'm fairly easy going, but I need the work done to be organized, and well thought through. I work with music on, so, that is going to be something the intern will have to work with.
Work Environment
The lab is being rented from A*star's Institute of Chemical and Engineering Sciences on Jurong Island. Transport will be provided from Jurong East MRT station. In terms of working environment, the lab is in a separate building from the main astar building, so a fair bit of the time, the lab is isolated.
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