FEnEx CRC Scholar
Paria graduated with a Master’s degree in Chemical Engineering and is currently a Ph.D. candidate at Curtin University. Paria’s research focuses on helium and hydrogen recovery from gas mixtures with the novel trapdoor zeolites through an encapsulation mechanism. Cryogenic distillation and adsorption-based processes as conventional methods for helium refinement from natural gas methods are costly and energy-intensive because of sub-zero temperature requirements and the low adsorption affinity of helium on common adsorbents. These novel zeolites via the encapsulation method can explore an extreme selectivity for helium molecules over the larger gas molecules such as N2 and CH4. With the same concept, the developed technology can be applied to purify natural hydrogen (H2) due to its similar size to helium.