Gary Rochelle

Gary Rochelle is the Carol and Henry Groppe Professor in Chemical Engineering and a faculty member at the University of Texas at Austin. His research focuses on developing fundamental insights into kinetic and mass transfer phenomena in aqueous technologies for air pollution control and acid gas treating, particularly for carbon dioxide and mercury removal.

• Education: Ph.D. in Chemical Engineering from UC Berkeley (1977), M.S./B.S. from MIT (1971)

His work addresses critical challenges in CO2 capture using amine scrubbing, including process design optimization, solvent degradation mitigation, and pilot plant validation. Recent studies emphasize energy efficiency, oxidation inhibition, and environmental impacts such as amine aerosol emissions.

The Texas Carbon Management Program, which he contributes to, aims to improve amine scrubbing technologies for retrofitting power plants and enabling geological sequestration or enhanced oil recovery. His group has validated concentrated aqueous piperazine (PZ) with an advanced flash stripper as the most efficient open-literature system.