Three Tech Professors Receive Grants For Petroleum Research

Three Tennessee Tech professors will use a new grant award from The American Chemical Society to fund research projects centered around petroleum.

Dr. Ranil Gurusinghe said the grant will allow them to build a fourier transform microwave spectrometer in the lab. Gurusinghe said the instrument will allow researchers to isolate the highly reactive radicals created in the combustion process that they want to study.

“This involves developing a microwave, like out of circuits, and also playing, working with high vacuum systems,” Gurusinghe said. “So this grant would allow us to purchase necessary research equipment.”

He said most of the grant money will be used to pay for undergraduate students to assist in the research projects. Gurusinghe said the usage of micro-spectroscopy will allow them to learn about the chemical structure, geometry, and reactivity of these radicals.

“If I can pay them a stipend, it would help these students to spend more time on research and they don’t have to worry about working outside,” Gurusinghe said.

Gurusinghe said the radicals they are studying become unstable after a few microseconds.

“The radicals are not stable in the room, under the regular room temperature pressure conditions,” Gurusinghe said. “So not many techniques can isolate them, study them, and so that we don’t know their precise chemical properties.”

Professors Dr. Kyle Murphy and Dr. Gourab Bhattacharya are researching asphaltenes found in petroleum and the history of the petroleum and natural gas reserves in the Cumberland Plateau respectively.