Meet Khalid

Name: Khalid A. Al-Ali
Research interest: Solar upgrade of methane by dry reforming in direct contact bubble reactor
Email: kalali@masdar.ac.ae

Short Bio

Born in Sharjah in 1983, graduated from UAE University and awarded the degree of Bachelor of Mechanical Engineering since 2006. For three years later, Khalid had worked as a site integrity engineer for an operating oil and gas company (ADMA-OPCO) in Abu-Dhabi. Currently, He is Masdar Institute Research Fellow, is majoring in Chemical Engineering as PhD student under the supervision of Prof. Sekiguchi, at the Tokyo Institute of Technology, Japan.

Research Summary

Solar energy is not a viable option unless energy can be stored on a large scale. Some form of storage is necessary. Conversion of solar energy into chemical fuels is an attractive method of solar energy storage. Direct Contact Bubble Reactor (DCBR) was proposed to promote solar thermal energy storage idea by methane dry reforming with a higher energy conversional capacity, higher thermal efficiency and greater simplicity of construction. Experimental study and simulation on this subject seems to provide useful information for the solar energy conversion process.

The main purpose is to model and simulate the endothermic reaction with respect to kinetics of methane dry reforming reaction in a direct contact bubbling reactive system containing molten salts and a catalyst.