Biography

Kim Choon Ng is a professor at the Water Desalination & Reuse Center (WDRC) of BESE Division of King Abdullah University of Science & Technology (KAUST. He was born in Malaysia in 1952 and had his education initially in Kedah, later in Penang and Singapore. He obtained his BSc. (1975) and PhD (1980) in Mechanical Engineering at the University of Strathclyde, Glasgow, United Kingdom. After graduation, Dr Ng worked briefly at the research center of Babcock Power Ltd, Glasgow, UK and he joined the ME Department in 1981 as a lecturer and promoted through the ranks to a full tenured professor in 2006. He has trained more than 20 PhDs and a dozen post-doctoral fellows. He has published 3 book, 6 book chapters 16 patents and more than 246 peer-reviewed papers
Professor Ng’s research has been focusing on the heat and mass transfer of thermally-driven systems such as solar thermal plants, thermal-hydraulics of nuclear (PWR) plants, cooling machines or chillers, heat pumps. In 2000, he research focus is in the areas of solar engineering, heat pumps, cooling machines and adsorption thermodynamics for solid-vapor interactions where he pioneered the adsorption cycles for seawater desalination and cooling (ADC and MEDAD cycles). The unique features of the thermally-driven cycles are (i) its ability to utilize low temperature waste heat for regeneration of adsorbents such as silica gel, zeolite, activated carbon etc., (ii) its ability to handle high concentration feed in the cycle, (iii) it has almost no major moving parts which makes the cycles robust and low in maintenance (operational cost). The ADC can be synergistically integrated with proven thermal cycles such as the MED/MSF of the desalination industry, boosting the water production by more than 2 folds with the conversion of waste heat for the ADC to produce useful cooling and potable water. The combined or hybridized cycle, called the MEDAD cycle, has one of the lowest specific energy consumption for seawater desalination, less than US$0.5 /m3. His publication in the area of ADC has more than two hundred papers and it forms a major part of his citations in the recent years. His current research H-index (google scholar) is 72 with more than 16680 citations. Dr Ng is associate editors to 3 journals and a professional engineer (PE) in Singapore where he serves as a member of the examination committee of PE Board.
Dr Ng has won the following awards:
(i) the Ludwig Mond Prize, 2006 of IMechE (Part E), London,
(ii) the IES Prestigious Engineering Achievements Award 2009 –by IES for research in Adsorption Technology for Desalination and Cooling (ADC),
(iii) the World Class University (WCU) program (2008-2013) of National Research Foundation, Korea,
(iv) the NUS Innovation & Enterprise Award 2014 (April 2014), and
(v) the GE-Aramco Global Desalination water challenge award 2015 (January 2015).
(vi) the IES Prestigious Engineering Achievements Award 2015 and the ASEAN Prestigious Engineering Achievements Award 2015.
(vii) The IDA Sustainability Best paper Award 2019, Dubai. IDA World Congress.
(viii) First commercial Pilot Adsorption Desalination and Cooling pilot, using the joined-patent of KAUST and NUS, has been constructed by King Abdulaziz City of Science and Technology (KACST). More reading from: https://uk.finance.yahoo.com/news/desalination-technology-saudi-arabia-opens-120200018.html