Dr Amir Jahanbakhsh

Research Fellow/Programme Manager

School of Engineering & Physical Sciences, Institute of Mechanical, Process & Energy Engineering, Heriot-Watt University, Riccarton, UK

Biography

Dr Amir Jahanbakhsh holds a BSc and MSc in petroleum engineering from the Petroleum University of Technology and the University of Texas at Austin respectively. After finishing his MSc in 2005, he joined the Research Institute of Petroleum Industry as a petroleum-reservoir engineer. He was mainly involved in reservoir characterization, integrated reservoir studies and field development plan projects. In 2010 he was assigned as the Head of Reservoir Studies Division in the institute. Along with technical activities, he was heavily involved in project management, business development and human resource management.

In September 2012, after 7 years of work experience in the oil and gas industry, he started his PhD at the Institute of GeoEnergy Engineering-Heriot-Watt University. The research area of his PhD was the characterization of two- and three-phase flow in porous media, estimation of three-phase relative permeability, modelling and simulation of multiphase flow for subsurface processes.

He finished his PhD in August 2016 and then joined the Research Centre for Carbon Solutions (RCCS) at Heriot-Watt University. Amir is a Research Fellow in energy and carbon storage, and Programme manager at RCCS. His research focuses on understanding the multiphase flow mechanisms in porous media at different scales using various techniques including CFD and microfluidics. Carbon capture and storage, geo-energy and more recently hydrogen economy have been his main areas of research. Since he joined RCCS he has been involved in managing large multinational multidisciplinary consortium projects across the CCUS value chain including MILEPOST-Microscale Processes Governing Global Sustainability (ERC), Low carbon jet fuel through the integration of novel technologies for co-valorisation of CO2 and biomass (EPSRC) and Novel adsorbents applied to integrated energy-efficient industrial CO2 capture (EPSRC), PrISMa – Process-Informed design of tailor-made Sorbent Materials for energy-efficient carbon capture (ERA-ACT2) and more recently USorb-DAC – Unlocking the scalable potential of sorbent-based DAC technologies (RMI).

Roles & Responsibilities

RCCS Programme Manager

Research interests

Multiphase fluid flow in porous media, reservoir characterization, numerical simulation, subsurface processes including energy storage (H2 storage) and CO2 storage.