Administrative Officer
Dr Amr Omar
Doctor of Philosophy (PhD), 2021
Mechanical Engineering
University of New South Wales, Australia
Masters of Professional Engineering (MPE), 2017
Mechanical Engineering
University of Sydney, Australia
Bachelor of Science (B.s.), 2014
Mechanical Engineering
American University of Sharjah, UAE
Engineering
Mechanical and Manufacturing Engineering
Amr Omar has completed his PhD at the University of New South Wales, where he focused on developing solar thermal systems and combining them with desalination processes to alleviate water scarcity in rural-arid regions. His thesis was an industry-funded project where its contributions are not only academic but also have real-life outcomes.
He has published his work in several peer-reviewed high impact factor journals and presented his work in different acclaimed international conferences. In addition, Elsevier invited him to author a chapter for their new "Solar-driven water treatment" book. He was also awarded first place in the Three Minutes Thesis (3MT) 2020 competition from the School of Mechanical and Manufacturing Engineering, representing them in the inter-faculty heats. Besides, due to his research contributions, he was awarded the "research student award" given by the UNSW postgraduate council. Overall, Amr's main goal is to provide a more clean, efficient, and cost-effective integration of solar-desalination systems to meet the ever-increasing energy-water demands.
E-mail
Location
Room 402, Level 4, Ainsworth Building, Kensington campus
- Publications
- Media
- Grants
- Awards
- Research Activities
- Development of a hollow fiber vacuum membrane distillation module with CSIRO Energy (2020-2021). This prototype was asked by CSIRO Energy for their research project on a process that integrates membrane desalination with amine-based CO2 capture (>6000 AUD).
- Research student award from UNSW's postgraduate council, University of New South Wales, 2020.
- First place in the three-minute thesis (3MT) in the school of mechanical and manufacturing engineering, University of New South Wales, 2020.
- Australian postgraduate award full scholarship, University of New South Wales, 2017.
- Engineering top-up award, University of New South Wales, 2017.
- Runner up to the best postgraduate thesis in the School of Aerospace, Mechanical and Mechatronic Engineering, University of Sydney, 2017.
- Research assistantship position, American University of Sharjah, 2014.
- Merit and Dean's List Awardee, American University of Sharjah, 2010 - 2014.
Amr Omar has been working with membrane distillation technologies, particularly vacuum membrane distillation (VMD). He has developed the first hollow fiber-based multi-effect vacuum membrane distillation design, where it recycles the latent heat from the distillate to reduce the specific energy consumption and increase the production capacity. His design can be used in multiple applications, such as seawater desalination, pre-treatment and post-treatment, biomedical applications (kidney dialysis), carbon capture technologies, and building integration clean water systems.
He has also investigated the integration of solar energy into well-developed desalination systems (e.g., multi-effect distillation, thermal vapor compression, multi-stage flash, and reverse osmosis). One of his ideas is to use the 'free' waste heat from a concentrated solar power (CSP) plant to drive a thermal desalination system to cogenerate electricity and freshwater. He has compared the conventional steam cycle and the supercritical CO2 cycle as the CSP plant's power blocks before being coupled with a desalination system.
Accordingly, Amr's research aims to bridge the forgoing gaps by optimizing the hollow fiber VMD and integrating a well-established desalination process with a CSP plant.