Sameer Parvathikar is a research chemical engineer in RTI’s Technology Advancement and Commercialization business unit. In this capacity, he leads several U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) and commercially funded projects and programs on green chemicals production and grid-scale energy storage. As the principal investigator of the DOE Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy’s (ARPA-E) REFUEL+IT program, he leads a large team consisting of university, non-profit, and industry collaborators in building a pilot-scale clean energy and chemicals hub to produce low- and zero-carbon hydrogen and ammonia from intermittent renewable energy that will demonstrate their use as a fuel and fertilizer. This program builds on a successful early-stage development of innovative materials and processes that was led by Dr. Parvathikar. He also leads DOE-funded efforts to develop thermochemical energy storage for concentrated solar power. Dr. Parvathikar’s portfolio includes several other areas, including distributed and renewable gas-to-chemicals technologies and technology assessments, and clean-up technologies for syngas derived from waste and fossil fuel feedstocks.
Dr. Parvathikar previously worked for Praxair, Inc. (now Linde) in their H2/CO R&D group, where he worked on novel process designs for syngas and hydrogen production, purification, and cryogenic syngas separation.