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Liquefied natural gas, LNG, is crucial to the world's future prosperity and its energy
needs. It's the only way international trade of natural gas can happen. And it's the way
in which we're going to harness the most abundant and cleanest burning fossil fuel that we have.
I became interested in science as a result primarily of my father's guidance. He's a
chemist and he taught me to appreciate both the fundamental aspects of science, which
allow us to explain nature and - then how to use that to improve people's lives through
applied research in my case, in the area of energy.
Natural gas is a complex and often unsafe mixture. When it comes out of the ground,
it contains carbon dioxide, hydrogen sulfide, other nasty chemicals, as well as the main
methane and hydrocarbon materials.
So, engineers really have to handle it safely and convert it into a safe product and they
need to do that in as efficient a way as possible with minimal impact on the environment. What
makes the use of natural gas practical is its ability to be traded across continents
and LNG is critical to that.
There's tremendous scope to do that more efficiently and save large amounts of energy by understanding
the fundamental science that's behind the technology and that's the way in which we
can improve energy efficiency and reduce carbon emissions. So, my work improves the difficult
task of taking that raw mixture and separating it into the products that we want to use.
So, knowing with confidence how and when the fluid will split - for example- into a gas
and a liquid phase, and how we can safely inject the carbon dioxide into the reservoir
without contaminating the reserve. The most important contribution of my work is education
of the next generation of engineers and in addition, making the plants more efficient
and allow new reserves which are even more difficult to handle to become economically
viable.
LNG will be a central pillar of energy supply in the 21st Century and that will make, in
turn, Australia critical to providing the energy to billions of people whilst minimizing
the impact on the environment.