Mita Ray

Professor

PhD (Environ. Eng.) University of Minnesota
MTech (Chem. Eng.) Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur, India
BSc (Chem.) Calcutta, BTech (Chem. Eng.) University of Calcutta, Kolkata, India


Our research can be categorized in two broad areas: (i) advanced treatment technologies for water and waste treatment, and (ii) environmental modelling. All our contributions in research have a direct bearing on the reduction of environment pollution or understanding the fate processes of the pollutants in natural environment. Some of our pioneering research in advanced treatment technologies include: removal of bioaerosol using indoor lighting and a thin layer of TiO2 for designing sanitary surfaces for hospital, food processing industry or other clean room applications; improving the surface area and subsequent improvement in adsorption of organics by TiO2; doped TiO2 nanowires for water treatment and hydrogen production; photochemical reaction pathways relating hydroxyl radical, electron/hole, and superoxide radicals involved in photocatalysis of micropollutants in water; ultrasonication to pretreat anaerobic sludge prior to digestion to improve biogas production, odor removal, and sludge dewatering; membrane processes for removal of volatile compounds and micropollutants from water; application of bioassays for water quality evaluation; and modification of petroleum coke for adsorption of naphthenic acids from oil-sand processed water. In environmental modeling, we use both traditional approaches based on first principles, kinetics and equilibrium processes, and computational fluid dynamics (CFD). The recent work in this area includes modeling of pneumatic dryers for municipal sludge, determination of kinetic constants due to ultrasonic pretreatment of anaerobic sludge in traditional anaerobic digestion model and its sensitivity to relevant pretreatment parameters; design of open channel UV-disinfection reactor using CFD and CFD modeling of jet-mixing in wastewater reactor.

Professional Activities (last 5 years)

  • Organizer of symposium on Environment, 67th Canadian Chemical Engineering Conference, Edmonton, Alberta, October 22-25, 2017.

  • Organizer of symposium on Environment, 66th Canadian Chemical Engineering Conference, Quebec City, October 16-19, 2016.

  • Organizer, CSC symposium on Environmental Engineering, Halifax, NS, June 5-9, 2016.
    Book endorsement review- Wastewater Treatment: Occurrence and Fate of Polycyclic Aromatic Hydrocarbons (PAHs); CRC Press, Taylor & Francis Group, 2015.

  • Organizer, CSC symposium on Environmental Engineering, June 13-15, Ottawa, 2015.
    Chair of committee 29 (Environmental Engineering – Water), CFI Innovation Fund, 2015.

  • Member, organizing committee, 3rd International Conference Bioprocess and Engineering, 4-5 May, 2015, Baltimore, USA.

  • International Program Committee member, Water Resource Management (AfricaWRM 2014, September 1-3, 2014, Gaborone, Botswana.

  • Co-Chair, Industrial Wastewater Treatment and Environment, CSChE 2013 Annual Conference, October 2013, Fredericton, New Brunswick.

  • Member, International Advisory Board ICACE-2013, on Advances in Chemical Engineering” on March 8-9, 2013, NIT, Raipur, India.