It’s not every day that chemical engineers make the front page. Narani and his colleagues, however, made a splash in the Havre Daily News (the newspaper of the town where he had his first job) for developing a novel process to convert plant-based oils into jet fuel and other valuable chemicals.
This early recognition helped launch Narani’s career, and now he is a senior process engineer in the advanced biofuels and bioproducts process demonstration unit (ABPDU) at Lawrence Berkeley National Lab. He enjoys working with diverse clients, and helping them to “scale up and optimize their early-stage advanced biofuels, biomaterials and biochemicals, and process technologies from lab to commercial relevance.” His goal is to realize the untapped potential of alternative fuels, such as biodiesel and bioethanol, to improve environmental sustainability and human health.