John M. Persichetti

Teaching Associate Professor

BS - University of Colorado, Boulder
MS - Colorado School of Mines
Business/Management - 6-sigma training on statistical methods to understand business potential and effectively direct new business development; technology marketing; project management; legal compliance issues; and environmental management

Instruction Focus

With approximately 20 years of industrial experience and more than a decade of lecturer experience at Mines, my course focus is on process analysis, design, modeling, and optimization. The design program within chemical engineering has a foundation of faculty with extensive industrial design experience. My particular technology focus is on the energy sector – traditional hydrocarbon-based processes and in the emerging biofuels and waste-to-energy technologies. I continue to gain industrial design exposure, especially in the biotechnology sector, through external modeling and design projects related to alternative energy. This allows me to bring an applied understanding of bio-processing back to the classroom. For example, in my Bioprocess Engineering class I am excited to be working on the inclusion of gas chromatography and mass spectrometry analysis of our beer and wine (which students make as part of the fermentation portion of the course lab) to test the impact of process parameters on flavor and color. Another example is building a detailed reaction model of a bio-conversion process that includes the rigor of academic research yet expresses the practicality of how such a model is used by operating companies.

Engineering experience includes: applied thermodynamic and chemical reaction model development, process modeling for biomass conversion processes (thermochemical, digestion and fermentation processes) along with other biomass utilization technologies, petroleum refining, petrochemical processes, natural gas systems, coal conversion technologies, chemical processes, food-products, and wastewater treatment systems; data analysis and optimization to generate property prediction models; transient phenomena analysis, dynamic modeling, and improved solution techniques for time-variant unit operations (batch processes, adsorption and packed column processes). I have had the pleasure to serve as engineer/developer, as well as project and technology manager, on larger technology development projects related to batch reactors and distillation modeling; incorporation of environmental considerations into process designs and process operations; optimization of processes to achieve production, environmental, and cost minimization goals; utility system optimization; and chemical property data access and regression.

In the process modeling arena, our department has access to a wide range of process simulation programs including: HYSYS (as owned by Aspen Technologies and now offered as UniSim by Honeywell), ASPEN Plus (by Aspen Technologies), PRO/II (by Simulation Sciences), and many other commercially available process simulation programs. We also develop user-added process modules for use within these simulation environments and develop customized process analysis tools through Excel spreadsheet models, COMSOL, and stand-alone executable codes.