Understanding multiscale multiphase reacting flow in porous media and their application in renewable energy industry

This PhD studentship will develop multiscale modelling of multiphase reactive flows in advanced chemical, electrochemical and photocatalytic reaction systems for energy conversion and harvesting with industrial relevance. The project will be run in tight collaboration with Dr Jin Xuan at Heriot-Watt University in Edinburgh.

Dr Timm Krueger’s group at the University of Edinburgh specialises in modelling and simulation of mesoscale fluidic systems, such as emulsions, suspensions and cellular blood flow.

Supported by EPSRC and other funding sources, Dr Xuan’s group at Heriot-Watt focuses on the fuel cell water management in electrodes, CO2-to-fuel valorisation in microreactors and photocatalytic reactions in 3D printed structures. It is generally recognised that the lack of understanding of the multiscale flow phenomena is one of the central challenges in the system design and optimisation for all the above applications.

It is the aim of the PhD studentship to combine the research excellence at both universities, i.e., advanced modelling (University of Edinburgh) and energy engineering (Heriot-Watt University), to enable the study of interplay of flow phenomena with chemical, electrochemical and photocatalytic reactions in great detail.

The student will be guided to develop Lattice Boltzmann (LB) models to study the pore-resolved transport-reaction interaction and phenomena at relevant length and time scales. Furthermore, the mesoscale LB model will be coupled with the macroscopic computational fluid dynamic (CFD) model developed in Dr Xuan’s group to understand the relationship between pore-scale phenomena and system-level performance. The student will also collaborate with the experimental team at Heriot-Watt to validate the model and achieve synergies with the energy material and device development.