Dr Roberto Volpe
PhD

Research Overview

Providing pathways for low emissions renewable based technologies to ensure secure and sustainable energy supplies has been a goal during many years of research and currently one of UK national importance for ‘Achieving energy security and efficiency’ and 'Transform to a sustainable society, with a focus on the circular economy'. I concentrate my research work on biomass conversion for energy purposes in pyrolysis and gasification set-ups.

Much of the technological challenges facing biomass pyrolysis and gasification, relate to current lack of fundamental knowledge of biomass thermochemical breakdown. I design experiments to fill these knowledge gaps, break through existing barriers and allow scaling-up of a robust and versatile small-scale gasification technology.

My current research interests are:

1. Gasification of solid fuels in moving bed set-ups
2. The evolution of solid biofuels during thermal breakdown
3. Synthesis of renewable carbon materials through biomass thermal conversion
4. The use of biomass char in catalytic tar cracking