Ernest Chua

I am well-known for my works on unconventional cooling and dehumidification processes, and thermal
energy recovery. My group has performed significant work on identifying composite materials and
synthetic strategies, leveraging exergy-entropy platform, and intensive computational methods to develop
breakthrough membrane dehumidifier, composite superabsorbent desiccant, compressor-less chemicalfree
based air conditioning system that does not dissipate heat, and thermally-cascaded processes. Many
of my fundamental discoveries are being used by others in the scientific communities. My team has made
it a focal point to gain better fundamental insights on the enhanced transport phenomena through new
counter-flow thin-layer evaporation, composite materials, and thermal energy storage and processes. In
particular, we have proposed the concepts of “tri-hybrid material synthesis” and “energies-entropyexergy”
which have provided a new framework to understand how these unconventional thermal devices
operate while designing new approaches to promote their heat and mass transfer performance and
efficiencies. Another key contribution from my team is the elucidation of the fundamental limits to efficient
membrane and composite desiccant dehumidification. Understanding these limits serve as the idea
benchmarks that are theoretically critical to designing and developing future high-performing membrane
and composite desiccant-based moisture removal devices. In addition, minimizing the trade-off between
material selection and synthesis process, improved transport phenomena, and overall effective device
performance can be established. In the real world applications, my team has studied and explored
hybridizing our unconventional dehumidification and cooling technologies to initiates the new starting point
for the next generation of environmentally sustainable and energy-efficient air conditioners for all weather
conditions. A further notable contribution from my group entails the combination of two separate
platforms (1st platform – smart exergy-matching and waste heat cascading utilization and 2nd platform –
a mixed-mode Fuzzy and Pareto optimization) to evolve an intriguing platform that enables smart thermal
component-system design, whilst providing a means for maximizing of components’ system-in-system
performance and eventually overall thermal system performance; yielding optimum amount of thermallydriven
utility productions and achieving maximum system efficiency.