Sawsan Ali is a Chemical Engineering PhD student at Khalifa University conducting her research on unlocking sustainable Hydrogen production, under the supervision of Professor Lourdes Vega, Director of the Research and Innovation Center on COâ‚‚ and Hydrogen (RICH Center).
Her thesis aims to integrate over 14 years of industrial experience with scientific research to design and optimize low-carbon hydrogen production technologies from waste resources, with a particular focus on hydrogen sulfide (Hâ‚‚S) and wastewater as feedstocks. Her thesis at RICH Center focuses on developing comprehensive techno-economic and life cycle assessment (LCA) frameworks to accelerate the commercialization of these low-TRL (Technology Readiness Level) technologies and unlocking their market potential.
Recognizing a critical gap in current research, Sawsan's work addresses the untapped potential of waste industrial effluents—such as sour gas streams rich in Hâ‚‚S and polluted municipal or industrial wastewater—as viable sources for sustainable hydrogen production. Her thesis delivers the first scale-up assessments of these emerging pathways and tailor their performance against matured industrial benchmarks, including Claus processes for sour gas treatment and sulfur recovery, wastewater treatment, and mature low-carbon hydrogen technologies like steam methane reforming with carbon capture and water electrolysis.
Sustainable Production of Hydrogen in the UAE
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