Victor Francia

Dr Francia is a chemical engineer from Universidad de Salamanca, 2006, Spain, with several other postgraduate degrees in environmental engineering and international cooperation. He has a professional background in fast-moving consumer goods FMCGs, water and energy sectors. Before joining an academic career, he worked as an engineer in desalinization in Spain, Acciona, and as R&D manager for Procter & Gamble, P&G, UK. In 2009, he started his doctoral studies working with P&G and the University of Birmingham in new research platform describing spray drying in swirling towers, including (characterization of large vortex flows, study of particle/droplet agglomeration, drying and deposition, and scale-up. In 2012/14, Victor joined the Thermofluids division at Mechanical Engineering in Imperial College London to develop multiphase models of full-scale dryers. After his doctoral studies, he worked as consultant for ExxonMobil optimizing the fouling dynamics of heat exchangers at an Imperial spin-off company, Hexxcell Ltd, and later joined University College London, UCL, working on process intensification with Prof Marc-Olivier Coppens to create and commercialise a new type of operation, dynamically structured fluidized beds.

In 2019, Victor joined us at the Institute of Mechanical, Process and Energy Engineering IMPEE, to start up his research group, xFlow - Complex Flow technologies wth the goal of delivering efficient, robust and flexible technical solutions to emerging processes in the energy and manufacturing industries.