Many industrial feeds are mixtures of thousands of compounds: crude and heavy oil fractions, bio-oils, pyrolysis oils from plastic waste and recycled streams. In reactors, heat exchangers and on catalysts, these mixtures form deposits: coke, polymers, gums and inorganic scale. Fouling and catalyst deactivation set the run length and the cost of refining and petrochemical units, and they will decide whether waste-derived and bio-based feeds can be processed at scale. Predicting them requires a molecular description of the mixture and a kinetic model that can use it. The two are rarely combined. The MuRE group studies how deposits and coke form in catalytic and thermal processes and builds kinetic models from lumped schemes to molecular-level descriptions. The intern will work on one or more of: - Characterization of complex liquids and deposits with methods available in the group and at KAUST Core Labs, for example GC-MS, GCxGC, high-resolution mass spectrometry, NMR, FTIR, Raman, TGA-MS, and temperature-programmed oxidation. - Laboratory tests that reproduce fouling or coking under controlled temperature, residence time, and composition. - Data reduction and kinetic modeling of deposit formation: lumping, parameter estimation, and data-driven or machine-learning tools for large analytical data sets. - Simulation of the reactor or exchanger to predict deposit growth and run length. The project is open to chemists (analytical, physical, or organic) and chemical engineers.

- Characterization protocol for a selected feed and its deposits, with the composition data set. - Experimental data on deposit or coke formation as a function of operating conditions. - Kinetic model of deposit formation with estimated parameters and confidence intervals. - Simulation of deposit growth or run length for a reference case. - Internship report and presentation; contribution to a peer-reviewed publication where results allow.