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Student Spotlight: Anand Gopal
Student Spotlight Directory
 ERG PhD candidate, Anand Gopal.
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 Sugarcane ethanol distillery Sao Paulo, Brazil
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 PHOTO/D. KAMMEN
Harvesting sugarcane Lampung, Indonesia.
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"Sweet Times For Cane: Can Gasification Further Boost Sugarcane Biofuels?"
Anand is a Ph.D. candidate in the Energy and Resources Group. Anand came to ERG after working for several years on the engineering aspects of energy technologies with a desire to incorporate the economic and policy aspects of energy into his work. Anand was drawn to ERG because it offered an academic setting that actively encouraged the pursuit of applied, practical solutions to the resource problems facing the world.
Anand is most interested in problems that involve the engineering development of renewable energy technologies followed by the design of policies that pave the way for their widespread adoption, especially in the developing world. He is also interested in understanding the environmental and social justice impacts of energy markets.
For his PhD research, Anand is developing an engineering assessment of biomass gasification from small-scale distributed generators to large, centralized plants. Where it is appropriate to use biomass for energy, gasification shows immense potential for both electricity generation and transportation fuel production. Anand and Dr. Dan Kammen, along with the Schatz Energy Research Center at Humboldt State University are conducting experimental research in biomass gasifiers of different scales in order to determine the key design factors that influence the efficiency, reliability and cost of this technology. With an accurate characterization of the technology in hand, Anand will then develop an economic model of production with the incorporation of large scale biomass gasifiers in one of the likely early adopters, the sugarcane industry. Specifically, Anand will apply this production model to Brazil, which is the world’s largest sugarcane producer.
Like many other ERGies, Anand is passionate about finding ways to bring affordable modern energy services to the world’s poor. Hence, in addition to his dissertation research, Anand was a member of an interdisciplinary team of four students that was awarded the Bridging the Divide Fellowship to assess the feasibility of replacing polluting kerosene lamps with WLED lights in the rural areas of Gujarat state in India. In collaboration with a local NGO, Sahjeevan, and a renewable energy company, Aurore, the team conducted a field test and survey of WLED lighting systems in two different villages.
PHOTO/N. KERAI
Discussing WLED project with the residents of Paia village, Gujarat, India.
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 Sugarcane harvesting Sao Paulo, Brazil
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The most valuable feature of ERG to Anand are his passionate and brilliant student peers who work on an unbelievably diverse array of issues all of which attempt to solve the largest environmental and social problems of our time. In addition, Anand has benefited immensely from being able to tap the exceptionally rich resources available all across the Berkeley campus in fields of Business, Economics and Engineering.
Anand is grateful to his faculty advisors Dan Kammen, Mike O’Hare, Rob Dibble, Severin Borenstein and Arne Jacobson. His fieldwork cannot progress without the assistance of Dr. Sergio Pacca at the University of Sao Paulo and he would not be able to feed himself without the funding provided by the Schatz Energy Research Center and the Sugar Group Companies of Lampung, Indonesia. He is also grateful to the Bridging the Divide Fellowship and the Energy Biosciences Institute for funding some of his research and travel.
Prior to coming to Berkeley, Anand was a Research Engineer at the Schatz Energy Research Center at Humboldt State University where the focus of his work was on the design of a hydrogen transportation infrastructure and the modeling of PEM fuel cells. He also worked in the Indian software industry for a year. Anand has an M.S. in Environmental Systems Engineering from Humboldt State University and a B.S. in Civil Engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology Madras.
4/09
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