Maruti Bhandarkar

MS chemical engineering 1985, PhD 1988

Occupation: Team leader, Global Process Engineering department, Chevron Phillips Chemical Company

Residence: Houston, TX

Family: Wife, Mamata, and daughter, Manasa.

(This profile appeared in the Department of Chemical Engineering Fall 2012 newsletter.)

Maruti Bhandarkar has over 20 years of experience in pilot plant scale process research and commercial scale process engineering.

After graduating in 1988 with a PhD in chemical engineering from U of R, he worked as a research associate in the Inorganic Membrane Research Center at WPI (Worcester, MA) where he investigated the use of hollow glass fiber membranes for gas separation at high temperatures.

Subsequently Dr. Bhandarkar joined Badger Licensing, a subsidiary of Raytheon Company at the time. During nearly 16 years of employment at Badger, he mostly worked in the company’s Weymouth (MA) R&D facility. He started off as a research engineer and later became a research program manager.

At Badger, Dr. Bhandarkar primarily worked on developing the processes for the manufacture of cumene and ethylbenzene by the liquid-phase benzene alkyla- tion using Exxon Mobil’s proprietary, zeolite catalysts. He also worked on improving Badger’s highly successful process for the manufacture of styrene by dehydrogenating ethylbenzene. A significant fraction of the world’s production of cumene, ethylbenzene and styrene is being carried out using Badger’s technologies.

Dr. Bhandarkar is presently working in the Houston (TX) area as a team leader in the Global Process Engineering department of Chevron Phillips Chemical Company (CPChem). He oversees a team of chemical engineers responsible for providing support to CPChem’s plants manufacturing polystyrene and a variety of specialty chemicals. His team also focuses on maintaining CPChem’s position in several proprietary technologies for specialty chemicals, as well as bringing in innovations to improve profitability.

Dr. Bhandarkar has also had a stint in academia. During 2001-2004, he took a break from the US chemical industry and returned to his native country, India. There he worked as professor and head of the Department of Chemical Engineering at BMS College of Engineering, in Bangalore (India).

Dr. Bhandarkar and his wife, Mamata, reside in Houston (TX). They have one daughter, Manasa, who is studying medicine in Boston.