Jefferson William Tester
Biography
Dr. Tester is the Croll Professor of Sustainable Energy Systems in the School of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering at Cornell University. He also serves as Director of the Cornell Energy Institute and Associate Director for Energy in the Atkinson Center for a Sustainable Future. Prior to his appointment at Cornell in 2009, Dr. Tester was the H.P. Meissner Professor of Chemical Engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology where he served as Director of MIT's Energy Laboratory (1989-2001) and Director of MIT's School of Chemical Engineering Practice (1980-1989). His research on renewable and conventional energy extraction and conversion and environmental control technologies has resulted in over 200 scientific publications and 10 co-authored books. Professor Tester is a fellow of the Royal Society of Chemistry and currently a member of the IPCC's Working Group on Renewable Energy Sources, and advisory boards of the National Renewable Energy Laboratory, the American Council of Renewable Energy, Idaho National Laboratory, and Los Alamos National Laboratory.
Research Interests
Energy/Resource Related Problems -Advanced drilling technology using thermal spallation and fusion -Heat mining processes for geothermal energy extraction -Petroleum and geothermal reservoir engineering (chemical reaction and transport in fractured rock reservoirs) -Energy technology assessments and analysis -Gas hydrates for methane recovery
Environmental -Destruction of hazardous chemicals in supercritical water -Aquifer contamination from migration of wastes -Supercritical fluids as reaction media for chemical synthesis -Carbon dioxide capture and sequestration includes (ocean- and land-based systems and gas hydrate formation and stability)
Applied Thermodynamics and Kinetics -Chemical kinetics in supercritical fluids -Molecular simulations of condensed matter -Properties of aqueous organic and electrolyte mixtures at high temperatures and pressures -Rock-water interactions in hydrothermal environments -Salt crystallization/dissolution phenomena in supercritical water
Teaching Interests
Energy systems analysis methods, renewable energy and fossil energy technologies, emphasis on applying quantitative methods using thermodynamic, kinetic and transport fundamentals in the context of scalable practical energy processes operating under environmental and economic constraints
Selected Publications
- . 2012. "Oxidative desulfurization of middle distillate fuels." Energy & Fuels 26 (8): 5164-5176.
- . 2012. "Two-temperature stage biphasic CO2-H2O pretreatment of lignocellulosic biomass at high solid loadings." Biotechnology and Bioengineering 109 (6): 1499-1507.
- . 2012. "Producing concentrated solutions of monosaccharides using biphasic CO2-H2O mixtures." Energy & Environmental Science (5): 6990-7000.
- . 2012. "Producing concentrated solutions of monosaccharides using biphasic CO2-H2O mixtures." Energy and Environmental Science 5: 6990-7000.
- . 2012. "Geothermal resource assessment: A detailed approach to low-grade resources in the states of New York and Pennsylvania." Stanford, CA January (1st Quarter/Winter) 30.
Selected Awards and Honors
- Special Achievement Award (Geothermal Resources Council (GRC)) 2011
- Fellow of the Royal Society of Chemistry 2010
- Outstanding Faculty Member Award (Massachusetts Institute of Technology) 2004
- Outstanding Faculty Member Award (Massachusetts Institute of Technology) 2001
- Award for a paper on salt separation during supercritical water oxidation (Society of Automotive Engineers) 1990
Education
- BS (Chemical Engineering), Cornell University, 1966
- MS (Chemical Engineering), Cornell University, 1967
- Ph D (Chemical Engineering), Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 1971
