Educational Background

PhD, Vanderbilt University 1989

MS, Vanderbilt University 1986

BS, Virginia Tech 1979

Professional Experience

Dr. Whitlow joined the faculty at Florida Tech in 1989. Prior to obtaining his doctoral degree, Dr. Whitlow worked in industry as both a process engineer and a production engineer. During his six years of industrial experience, Dr. Whitlow was involved in the management, design and start-up of capital projects, as well as process operation troubleshooting. Dr. Whitlow is a professional engineer with registration in the state of Tennessee and has worked as a consultant both internationally and within the US.

While at Florida Tech, Dr. Whitlow has worked on numerous externally funded research projects with total funding exceeding 1.4 million dollars. In addition, Dr. Whitlow has worked at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center through summer fellowships on six different occasions.  Dr. Whitlow has taught courses at both the graduate and undergraduate level including courses in process dynamics and controls, reactor design, computational methods and process design.

Current Courses

CHE 4122 Chemical Process Control

CHE 4181 Chemical Engineering Plant Design 1

CHE 4182 Chemical Engineering Plant Design 2

CHE 4240 Advanced Computational Methods

Selected Publications

Dominguez J. A. and Whitlow J., Model-Based Estimation of Sample's Temperature Profile within a High-Vacuum Thermal Chamber, Computational Thermal Sciences: An International Journal, Volume 14, Issue 3, 2022, pp. 83-102.

Dominguez. J.A and Whitlow J, Marangoni effect and its potential utilization in supporting lunar habitats and other extraterrestrial endeavors, Advances in Space Research, Volume 69, Issue 5, 1 March 2022, Pages 2259-2267

 Dominguez J. A. and J. Whitlow Upwards migration phenomenon on molten lunar regolith: New challenges and prospects for ISRU,  Advances in Space Research, Volume 63, Issue 7, 1 April 2019, Pages 2220-2228

Whitlow, J.E., Selective Fischer-Tropsch Catalyst For Producing C9-C16 Hydrocarbons, with D. Fraenkel & J. White of Eltron Research and S. Dutta and U Ragula of Florida Tech, Final Report to Office of Naval Research.Feb. 2008.

Whitlow, J.E., Development of Process Models for the Production of Propellants from Lunar Regolith, Final Report NASA Grant NNK04EB98A, April, 2007..

Whitlow, J.E., Operation, Modeling and Analysis of the Reverse Water Gas Shift Process, with Clyde Parrish, Proceedings of the STAIF Conference, February, 2003.

Whitlow, J. E., An Alternative RWGS Configuration for Carbon Dioxide Processing, Space Resources Roundtable IV, Houston, Texas October, 2002.

Whitlow, J.E.  Simplified Robust High Performance PID Control Algorithms, Proceedings American Control Conference, Washington, D.C.

Whitlow, J.E.  Operation, Modeling and Analysis of the Reverse Water Gas Shift Process, NASA CR-2001.

Whitlow, J.E. 1999. Modeling and Analysis of the Reverse Water Gas Shift Process for In-Situ Propellant Production, NASA CE-1999-208586.

Research

Study of Fischer Tropsch synthesis for the production of liquid fuels in small scale reactors.

Operation, modeling and analysis of process systems for ISRU on Moon and Mars.

Development of process simulation models for the production of renewable energy.

Development of tuning methods for high performance PID controllers.

Research & Project Interests

Dr. Whitlow’s research activities have focused primarily in the areas of reactor performance and design, process modeling and simulation and process control. Research conducted in the process control area includes model-based control, performance improvement for PID controllers, expert system control and neural network control. Dr. Whitlow has worked on several funded projects involving experimental work on catalytic reactors and molten salt electrolysis. Dr. Whitlow also led a development effort for intelligent control software used by several companies in the manufacture of phosphoric acid. Research in the area of process modeling and simulation includes the development of modeling and simulation software in support of NASA’s mission to Mars and neural network prediction of physical properties. Dr. Whitlow has also worked as a consultant on process design and feasibility studies for the production of liquid fuel from carbon dioxide and renewable energy.