Management

Perlemax is led by a small but focused team.

Pratik D Desai, MEng (1st hons) Chemical Engineering with Fuel technology, PhD (Chemical Engineering), Technical Director

Dr Desai leads the strategic and tactical needs of the organisation and has technical oversight over all the technical projects within the organisation and directing its R&D activities. He has expertise in microbubble generation, fluidics, is a co-inventor of Desai-Zimmerman Fluidic Oscillator (for generating microbubbles), and has led pioneering work on hot microbubble injection in thin liquid layers including scale up. Pratik has extensive experience in microbubble generation, visualisation, fluid dynamics, non-equilibrium thermodynamics and associated phenomena, fluidics and reaction catalysis. He has worked on/working on lab scale and scale up of 4 different pilot plant processes developing several new technologies. He has designed disruptive solutions to conventional unit operations (microbubble distiller/condenser, microbubble stripper, and microbubble sorption) and translated them from blue-sky research ideas to POC and pilot scale within 2 years. He has also managed several projects and led technical innovations including implementation of microbubbles for ammonia-water- carbon dioxide reaction dynamics and catalysis, bioethanol production and separation, bioreactor design, bagged microbial reactors, fermenters, aquaculture, anaerobic digestion enhancement, foam dynamics, CO2 capture and sequestration–with Ionic liquids, MEA, and mineral carbonation, biodiesel production, micro/nanobubble drug delivery, large scale waste water unit, and WWA-self actuated wastewater aeration unit.

Dr Desai has also worked on microbial and algal based engineered communities in order to selectively uptake heavy metal ions from waste streams as well as algal growth and bioreactor development. Following on that, he is working on the ‘Waste Factory’- a concept developed by Desai in conjunction with Prof. Zimmerman which works towards a cascading circular economy approach in order to remediate waste and generate products; converting liabilities and remediating the waste streams into valorised products and energy- DZ MMARP. He has demonstrated each process in this cycle on the lab scale as a PoC and is leading a £1.5Mn application with academic and industrial partners in the UK and India. He is sole inventor of an energy efficient micro/nanodroplet generation method, a method for enhancing glycosylation, developed an artificial smog method for solid particulate separation, Desai Crystallisation scheme, novel growth enhancement via foam based scaffolds, and a novel gas enrichment processing solution. He is lead technologist/lead/co-lead on grants/projects totaling £6.47Mn (overall £14.21Mn). He has successfully run an internship scheme with over 200 members comprising of assistant professors, postdoctoral researchers, doctoral candidates, process engineers, M level, and UG students from across the world. He has consulted/consulting over 45 companies/industrial collaborators and prior to this has also been a management consultant with extensive experience in process improvements and operational excellence. He was a finalist for the IChemE Global Awards 2017 for the Young Researcher Award. His project on Anaerobic Digestion with biogas sweetening is a finalist for the ADBA global awards for best research project and has been highly commended (2nd/~200 nominees). He sits on the boards of directors of two other companies.

Graeme Hitchen, Managing Director

Graeme has worked with the Perlemax technology since its inception first when working with Sheffield University Enterprises Ltd and latterly as a director. He comes from the technology sector and has helped several new companies to start up.

Graeme was educated at the University of Sheffield and received his MBA from the University of Bradford.

Will Zimmerman BSc MSc PhD CEng FIChemE, Founder, Chairman of the Board

Will holds the Chair of Biochemical Dynamical Systems at the University of Shffield. He is a graduate of Princeton and Stanford Universities in Chemical Engineering, the author of over 130 scientific journal articles, past Director of the M Sc in Environmental and Energy Engineering, and a winner in US and UK national competitions of five prestigious fellowships. He has been lead technologist, principal or co- investigator in research projects worth over £18m since 1994.

• Winner of the 2009 Institution of Chemical Engineers’ Moulton Medal http://eyrie.shef.ac.uk/steelCO2/awards.html
• Winner of the 2010 Royal Society of London Innovation Award (Mercer Fund “Labs to Riches”).
• Winner of the 2010 UK AXA CleanTech Open Ideas Competition; International finalist at the 2010 Global CleanTech Open Ideas Competition.
• Semi-finalist for the 2011 Zayed Future Energy Prize.

Creative inventor of low energy fluidic oscillator driven microbubbles (patent awarded 2012) and plasma microreactors (patent awarded 2013) vested in Perlemax, a Faculty of Engineering spinout company from the University of Sheffield.