PATIL Neel Interviews with students in the international program in the School of Advanced Science and Engineering

I was born in Mumbai, India, and when I was eight, my family moved to Tokyo, where my father worked for a Japanese company. I lived here for six years, then we went to Singapore, where I did an International Baccalaureate in high school, and I came back to Japan in 2015 to attend Waseda, so I’ve lived in Japan for nine years in total — longer than I lived in India.

I’m a member of the Noda-Hanada lab, which I joined in September last year. The lab does a lot of things, though its main focus is carbon nanotube synthesis, batteries, hydrogen production and life-cycle assessment. I’m under Professor Hanada, studying hydrogen production via the thermal decomposition of ammonia.

Currently there are a lot of problems regarding global warming, so we’re looking for alternative energy sources, and hydrogen holds promise, because it can be used to produce electricity in fuel cells, is sustainable and has an energy mass density three times higher than that of gasoline.

It’s also abundant — it’s found in water, and in ammonia too, but it’s hard to store, as pure hydrogen tanks currently require high pressures, which can be costly. Ammonia has a high hydrogen content, and is the second largest produced chemical in the world, so if we can produce hydrogen from ammonia, we can solve a lot of our fossil fuel-related problems.
The main issue is that decomposing ammonia requires high temperatures, and so in my research, I am developing energy-efficient ammonia decomposition system and are commercially feasible.

I did an internship in third year, at an ammonia synthesis plant in India. It was a huge plant, producing 900 tons a day, using steam reforming of methane in natural gas. I learned a lot about what engineers do at work, and about how you can scale up certain processes. I worked under the technical services team, and had to learn about the technical aspects of the entire synthesis process, from start to finish.

It’s really good. The atmosphere in the lab is very motivational, and everyone looks after each other. It’s rigorous — we have to do presentations and participate in discussions where we talk about our progress, what we did in the past week, what we’re doing this week, what we’ll do next week. So that keeps us on our toes. Also, every student has to present a 15-minute seminar, twice per semester. It has to be new information every time. so you have to keep progressing — if not, you don’t have anything to talk about. It pushes you, in a good way

Though the official language of the lab is Japanese, the students are encouraged to also use English and have to prepare their seminar handouts in English as well as present three out of four seminars in English in the year. While this can be challenging for some students, it helps prepare them for international symposiums, conferences and poster presentations.

I’m planning to do a Master’s at Waseda, and will focus on the energy-efficiency of the ammonia decomposition process and its fuel cell applications. I really like the atmosphere in the lab, and I would like to make as much as progress in my research as possible.

After that, I’ll work in industry, something plant scale. I could go to Canada or the U.S., but I wouldn’t mind starting in Japan — having lived here so long and graduated from a prestigious university, and with references from professors Noda and Hanada, I’ll have a real advantage when I look for a job.