Max Lyubovsky Email & Phone Number

Technology for low-cost renewable net-zero carbon fuel production

Mclean, VA, US

Program development, contract negotiations and active project management in Methane Pyrolysis, REFUEL, REEACH, Flexible CO2 Capture, Direct Air Capture (DAC) and Direct Oceanwater Capture (DOC) programs at ARPA-E.

Washington, DC, US

• Providing technical expertise to high level government officials on energy policy issues.
• Conducted first ever comparative study of the cost of large scale electricity transmission vs. transportation of gaseous and liquid fuels.
• Developing strategy for converting renewable hydrogen into liquid hydrocarbon fuels on a large scale to establish sustainable carbon cycle for zero-emissions economy.
• Serving as a technical expert on Hydrogen Production, Hydrogen Fuel and H2@Scale programs.
• Developing research programs on water splitting technologies for production of renewable hydrogen and on natural gas decomposition to hydrogen and solid carbon products.

Burnaby, B.C., CA

• Led development of low-cost 1-10 kW Fuel Cell (FC) power systems for distributed power, backup power, and combined heat and power (CHP) applications operating on natural gas and methanol.
• Designed, built and tested integrated Fuel Processing Systems (FPS) using Design for Manufacturing and Assembly (DfMA) principles for low cost, high volume manufacturing.
• Built and tested system prototypes integrating FPS with FC stack and balance of plant (BOP).
• Demonstrated fast start up, transient response, broad turn down characteristics.
• Developed system control algorithms.
• Managed CFD modeling to balance reaction kinetics with heat transfer throughout the system.

• Developed and commercialized portable, turnkey 100 – 500 kg/day hydrogen plants (HGM).
• Transitioned from R&D to serial manufacturing and commercial sales;
• Modeled HGM process and system integration using HYSYS software package;
• Designed SMR, WGS, HDS reactors for the hydrogen generation plants;
• Supported HGM manufacturing and customer service.Developed automated, portable MicroGTL methanol plant at 100 barrels per day capacity.
• Conducted conceptual system design and cost evaluation of different technical solutions;

North Haven, Connecticut, US

• Developed and tested catalytic reactors and fuel reforming processes.
• Investigated hydrocarbon reforming using coated MicrolithTM catalysts - catalytic combustion, partial oxidation, autothermal reforming, water gas shift.
• Developed rich catalytic-lean burn (RCL) catalytic combustion technology.
• Invented radial flow (coiled) autothermal reforming reactor.
• Developed 5 kW integrated reforming system for converting JP-8 and diesel for SOFC stack.
• Demonstrated catalytic partial oxidation of methane into syngas at pressures above 15 atm. and power density ~ 30 MW/L.

Ph.D., Chemical Engineering

B.S./M.S., Chemical Physics