Rate My Professor Tom Rufford

Professor Tom Rufford serves as a Professor in the School of Chemical Engineering within the Faculty of Engineering, Architecture and Information Technology at the University of Queensland. He is also a chief investigator in the ARC Centre of Excellence for Green Electrochemical Transformation of CO2 (GETCO2). Rufford obtained his Bachelor of Engineering and PhD in Chemical Engineering from the University of Queensland in 2000 and 2009, respectively. His PhD thesis explored the use of porous carbon materials derived from waste coffee grounds for energy storage applications such as hydrogen adsorption and supercapacitors on board electric vehicles. Between 2001 and 2005, he worked as a process engineer and technologist at Shell’s Geelong Oil Refinery, managing crude distillation columns, naphtha reformers, and hydrogen purification plants. From 2010 to late 2012, he held a research fellowship at the University of Western Australia, focusing on natural gas processing and LNG production research projects with the Chevron Chair in Gas Process Engineering, Professor Eric May. He returned to the University of Queensland as a teaching and research academic in December 2012.

Rufford’s research focuses on gas processing and purification for cleaner energy production and utilization, including electrochemical processes for energy storage and CO2 reduction, natural gas process engineering, porous carbons, and solid-fluid interactions in coal seam gas reservoirs. Current and recent projects include electrochemical CO2 reduction and development of gas diffusion electrode materials, helium recovery and nitrogen rejection from natural gas, low permeability coals, and the capture of methane emissions from liquefied natural gas production plants. He has published more than 80 scientific papers in international journals and edited a book on carbon materials. Key publications include “Nanoporous carbon electrode from waste coffee beans for high performance supercapacitors” (Electrochemistry Communications, 2008), “The removal of CO2 and N2 from natural gas: A review of conventional and emerging process technologies” (Journal of Petroleum Science and Engineering, 2012), and “Catalyst-electrolyte interactions in aqueous reline solutions for highly selective electrochemical CO2 reduction” (ChemSusChem, 2020). His honors include the UQ Foundation Research Excellence Award in 2019 for CO2 conversion research, an Endeavour Research Fellowship visiting the Institute of Metals Research of the Chinese Academy of Sciences in Shenyang, China, and a visiting researcher position at the National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology in Tsukuba, Japan. Rufford is a chartered member of the Institution of Chemical Engineers and Engineers Australia in chemical engineering.