Elvira Spatolisano

Elvira Spatolisano is Research Fellow (Ricercatore a Tempo Determinato Junior (A)) at Dipartimento di Chimica, Materiali e Ingegneria Chimica “G. Natta” of Politecnico di Milano. As member of the “Group on Advanced Separation Processes & Gas Processing – GASP”, her research activity, also carried out in collaboration with Italian and foreign universities and research centers, concerns the analysis and development of new sustainable processes, with particular attention to the modelling of mass-transfer phenomena for reacting and non-reacting systems, also using commercial simulation packages such as Aspen Plus^®, Aspen HYSYS^®, ProMax^®, ProSim^®.

In view of the monetization of sour and ultra-sour gas reserves with a high hydrogen sulphide content, Elvira Spatolisano’s research activity focuses on H₂S valorisation through innovative technologies, to favour its conversion into high value-added chemicals (i.e., hydrophilic fertilizers/hydrogen) according to the circular economy principles. Specifically, she was involved in the development and industrialization of the HydroClaus process of Eni S.p.A., to study its kinetic model and analyze the critical issues for its scale-up.

Regarding the natural gas purification, Elvira Spatolisano studies the removal of nitrogen and helium by cryogenic distillation, considering different process configurations, to identify the optimal alternative based on energy and exergy considerations.

Elvira Spatolisano’s research is also focused on the design of non-conventional processes, such as the separation of water-alcohols azeotropes bio-produced, in order to reduce the energy requirements of the fractionation units as much as possible.

Currently, Elvira Spatolisano studies the transport and storage of hydrogen as an energy vector, to promote decarbonization, through the techno-economic analysis of different value-chains (ammonia, LOHC, liquefied hydrogen).

Elvira Spatolisano is/has been involved in projects financed by public administrations and in contracts between the Politecnico di Milano and external companies.

Elvira Spatolisano received her Master’s Degree in Chemical Engineering cum laude at Politecnico di Milano in 2018. In the same year, she won a doctoral scholarship founded by MIUR (the Italian Minister of University and Research) at Politecnico di Milano, where she received her PhD cum laude in Industrial Chemistry and Chemical Engineering in 2022. She worked as a post-doc research fellow in the CMIC Department and then she became RTD Junior in 2022.

Since the a. y. 2022/2023 Elvira is instructor of the course “Impianti e Processi Chimici” for Energy Engineers and since the a.y. 2019/2020 she has been teaching assistant for the course “Impianti Chimici” for Chemical Engineers of Politecnico di Milano.

She is co-advisor of Bachelor’s and Master’s theses in Chemical Engineering.

She is the first author and co-author of articles published in international journals and books or presented at national and international conferences. She is a peer reviewer for international journals.