People

Ilman Nuran Zaini is an assistant professor in the Faculty of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, Institut Teknologi Bandung (ITB), where he is a member of the Thermal Science and Engineering Research Group. He has held this position since January 2025. He completed his BSc in Mechanical Engineering at ITB, his MEng in Environmental Science and Technology at Tokyo Institute of Technology, and his PhD in Materials Science and Engineering at KTH Royal Institute of Technology, Sweden, in 2021.

His doctoral research at KTH, supervised by Docent Weihong Yang and Professor Pär Jönsson, addressed resource recovery through thermochemical conversion of landfill waste and biomass. He carried out this work as an Early Stage Researcher in the EU NEW-MINE project, developing plasma gasification of refuse-derived fuel from excavated landfills into hydrogen-rich syngas, with laboratory work at KTH and pilot tests at ScanArc. After his PhD he continued his research at the Department of Materials Science and Engineering, KTH, contributing to work on electrified heating and catalytic reforming for hydrogen and syngas production, and he has also worked with S. Mani Sarathy's group at King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST).

His research spans thermochemical conversion, renewable energy, industrial decarbonization, bioenergy and waste-to-energy. His published work covers gasification and pyrolysis of biomass and waste, catalytic and electrified reforming for syngas and hydrogen production, carbon-negative direct reduced iron for fossil-free steel, techno-economic and life-cycle assessment of hydrogen carriers and ammonia, and carbon nanotube production from plastic waste. Projects he is involved in at ITB include electrified tar reforming combined with electrochemical Fischer–Tropsch synthesis for low-carbon liquid fuels from biomass gasification, an electric catalytic reformer for hydrogen and carbon anodes, a 100 kg/h waste gasifier, and co-firing of coal, biomass and ammonia.