Alexander W. Dowling

Alex Dowling is working toward his PhD in Chemical Engineering under the supervision of Prof. Larry Biegler at Carnegie Mellon University. His work focuses on the design and optimization of next generation fossil fuel power plant. He has applied dynamic optimization techniques to design pressure swing adsorption systems for carbon dioxide separation in IGCC powerplants. As part of the Carbon Capture Simulation Initiative (CCSI) sponsored by the Department of Energy, Alex is developing an equation based framework for coal oxycombustion flowsheet optimization. This framework combines cubic equations of state for rigorous thermodynamic calculations with state-of-the-art nonlinear programming algorithms for entire plant optimization.