Professor Will Zimmerman
BScEng, MSc, PhD, CEng FIChemE
email : w.zimmerman@sheffield.ac.uk
Tel: +44 (0)114 222 7517
Fax: +44 (0)114 222 7501
Chemical and Biological Engineering
Kroto Research Institute
North Campus
University of Sheffield
Broad Lane
Sheffield
S3 7HQ
Research Interests
- Energy efficient generation of microbubbles and their applications (particularly biofuels and bioreactors)
- Plasma microreactors, especially low power consumption generation of ozone
- Fluid dynamics of helical turbulence and mixing
- Thin film dynamics and microrheometry
- Computational modelling with inverse methods
Biography
A graduate of Princeton and Stanford Universities in Chemical Engineering, the author of over 100 scientific publications, past Director of the M Sc in Environmental and Energy Engineering, and a winner in US and UK national competitions of five prestigious fellowships (2005-6 Royal Academy of Engineering Senior Research Fellow, 2000-5 EPSRC Advanced Research Fellow; 1994-99 Royal Academy of Engineering, Zeneca Young Academic Fellow; 1991-93 visiting professorships appointed by the French Ministry of Education at the Littoral University in Dunkirk in 1998 and 2005. He was interviewed on his algal biofuels work on BBC Radio 4 “Material World with Quentin Cooper”, 4 Feb 2010. His Royal Academy of Engineering SRF, entitled “Systems Biology and Chemical Engineering” has laid down a protocol for optimal experimentation for bioreactor model-building via inverse methods. He directed Microfluidics 2003, a workshop at CISM in Udine from which he edited a book on microfluidics, and is the author of two bestselling texts on multiphysics modelling .
See http://www.worldscibooks.com/engineering/6141.html
Perlemax Ltd., a University spinout company, was founded to exploit his research and technological advances.
Perlemax and Zimmerman have won the recent awards / recognition:
2009 IChemE Moulton Medal
2010 Royal Society Innovation Award (Brian Mercer Fund) (Video)
2010 CleanTech Open, AXA UK Global Ideas Champion
2010 CleanTech Open, International Finalist, Global Ideas
2011 Zayed International Future Energy Prize, Semifinalist
Key Papers
William B. Zimmerman, Václav Tesař , H.C. Hemaka Bandulasena, Towards energy efficient nanobubble generation with fluidic oscillation, Curr Opin Colloid Interface Sci (2011), doi:10.1016/j.cocis.2011.01.010
William B. Zimmerman, Mohammad Zandi, H.C. Hemaka Bandulasena, Vaclav Tesarˇ,D. James Gilmour , Kezhen Ying "Design of an airlift loop bioreactor and pilot scales studies with fluidic oscillator induced microbubbles for growth of a microalgae Dunaliella salina" Appl Energy (2011), doi:10.1016/j.apenergy.2011.02.013.
H. C. H. Bandulasena, W. B. Zimmerman and J. M. Rees, “Creeping flow analysis of an integrated microfluidic device for rheometry.” Journal of non-Newtonian Fluid Mechanics 165(19-20): 1302-1308, 2010.
W.B. Zimmerman, “Electrochemical microfluidics.” Chemical Engineering Science, invited review paper doi:10.1016/j.ces.2010.03.057 , 2010.
J. H. Lozano-Parada and W. B. Zimmerman, “The role of kinetics in the design of plasma microreactors.” Chemical Engineering Science 65(17): 4925-4930, 2010.
Teaching
- CPE 6007 Microfluidics
- CPE 6160 Chemical Fluid Dynamics