Dr Stuart Scott

Dr Scott's research is focussed on the alernative ways of using solid fuels, which reduced their impact on the environment. In recent years concern has grown about the use of fossil fuels and the effect of the CO₂ they produce on the climate. Biomass and biofuels could be potentially carbon neutral, but there are issues such as land area and lifecycle CO₂ emmision which limit their contribution. Fossils fuels will continue to supply the majority of the world's power for the foreseable future. Ways of mitigating their impact include capturing the CO₂ ready for sequestration. Research in this area includes using alternative oxygen carriers (i.e. solids) to burn fuels, rather than air, in a process known as chemical looping and capturing the CO₂ using solid sorbents.

A second strand of work aims to model fluidised systems. In these systems complex two-phase flows of particles and a gas exist. Aside from a fundamental interest in granular flow, these system are often used for to process solid fuels, e.g. gasifiers or combustors.