8/9/2019 Politicians Have a Reputation of Making Outrageous Promises

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Politicians have a reputation of making outrageous promises. Or at least that’s what

I thought when I was spending my winter vacations in my native country Pakistan.

Pakistan is country that is not particularly blessed in non-renewable energy sources

particularly natural gas and oil. So, when the political leadership suddenly

campaigned to produce natural gas! from the poor "uality coal reserves Pakistan

has, I was naturally apprehensive. #ut no less intrigued.It turns out that for once the claims of these politicians were not so outrageous after

all. $s I studied this matter further, I was led to chemical engineering and it was the

obvious choice for me after I completed my high school studies. $t the moment I’m

in my %nal year of #&ng. in 'hemical &ngineering from (ational )niversity of

Sciences and *echnology and it has been a truly enriching e+perience for me. I have

especially enoyed studying the real life applications of dierent technologies and

the theoretical concepts involved with the mechanics of modern day processes.

hat was more fascinating was that I was able to apply this newly ac"uired

engineering knowledge to my initial interests in energy such as the production of

syngas. I was particularly interested in the upcoming research on the newtechnologies that aim to make underground coal gasi%cation more environmentally

friendly by applying the concept of carbon capture. *he carbon dio+ide in the

syngas can be compressed and stored underground or can be easily transported to

other operations such as enhancing oil recovery. $lso the coal cavities underground

that have been gasi%ed can be further used for carbon dio+ide storage to decrease

carbon dio+ide emissions in the atmosphere. *he syngas produced could potentially

end the electricity crises that grips Pakistan today and perhaps this gas could be

processed such as by the /ischer-*ropsch process to provide us with synthetic fuel to

further end our energy woes.

(ow in my %nal year, I was lucky enough to come across a proect that appealed to

me greatly as it was aligned with natural interests in energy but was also a novelidea to be submitted for an undergraduate degree. 0y proect basically involves a

case study on the catalytic naphtha reforming, using an appropriate lumping

scheme to make a steady state model through $spen 12S2S and also convert it into

dynamic state. *he proect also involves the design of a soft sensor that will take in

the basic process parameters such as temperature, pressure, hygrogen to carbon

ratio, etc. and by using an arti%cial neural network 3$((4 will produce an algorithm

that predicts the octane number of the gasoline produce by the reformer.

5esigning the soft sensor, I admit is what e+cites me the most primarily because it

is a novel idea that I feel will be an essential part of instrumentation in the process

industries in the near future. $lso by designing this sensor has allowed me learnoutside the realm of pure chemical engineering concepts. I have learned a good

deal of arti%cial intelligence particularly about designing $(( in 0$*6$#. $nd this

has really been an inspiration for me, for it has allowed me to understand how

dierent %elds of research such as that of arti%cial intelligence can be used by

chemical engineers to solve some our most pressing problems which in my case are

the long delays due to o-line analysis to determine the research octane number

37O(4 of gasoline.

8/9/2019 Politicians Have a Reputation of Making Outrageous Promises

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5uring my bachelor’s degree, I have had a taste of professional environment as I

was selected for the summer internships in &ngro 'orporation to spend a month at

their fertili8er plant. $nd it was truly a remarkable e+perience for me for it allowed

me to learn so much about plant operations. I was assigned to design department of 

the company and it helped me to really apply all the theoretical knowledge I had

learned and apply it to tasks I was given throughout my internship.

 *hough the thing that I most enoyed about my internship was when I was told to

come up with a proposal to solve a utilities issue. I had a design an infrastructure to

transport e+cess steam from one of the plants that produced e+cess of and

transport it to the main operation plant. *he main issue for that was since the steam

was at a very high pressure I had to si8e valves, design a de-superheater and draw

out the prospective network that would be used for the transportation. *his was a

really enlightening process to work in an industry and design something considering

all of the application constraints along with obviously the how economically feasible

it is for it to be applicable. *his e+perience was truly an e+hilarating one and onethat proved to me that this is what I want to do with my career.

Personally, I feel that a 0aster’s degree will strengthen my technical background

and will allow me to take up more challenging proects. *he proudest moments of

my life came through the things I was challenged with and it’s something I have

proved to be good at. I know that 0c9ill )niversity will oer me e+actly the

challenges that I look forward to. *his course would not only an e+tremely relevant

"uali%cation for my future plans but would allow me to discover a city as serene and

culturally diverse as 0ontreal. It would be an ama8ing opportunity to study at 0c9ill

and I hope that you allow me that honor.