Research Assistant/phd Student - Darmstadt, Deutschland - Technische Universität Darmstadt

Technische Universität Darmstadt

Geprüftes Unternehmen

Darmstadt, Deutschland

vor 3 Wochen

Geschrieben von:

Lena Wagner

beBee Recruiter

Beschreibung

At the Institute for Nano
- and Microfluidics, Faculty of Mechanical Engineering, Technical University of Darmstadt, there is a position for a

Research Assistant/PhD Student (all genders):

to be filled as of April 1st, 2023 or later. The position is initially limited to 3 years.

The research project is part of the joint project "Laplace pressure controlled gas diffusion electrodes for organic electrosynthesis (GDE4OES)" funded by the Federal Ministry of Education and Research within the cluster4future "ETOS".

Description of the overall project

The use of electric current in the synthesis of organic chemicals has become a key technology for the chemical-pharmaceutical industry due to the advancing energy and raw materials transition, the defossilization necessary due to climate change, and the expanded use of renewable energy.

However, the low availability of dissolved gases at the electrode presents a major challenge for broad technical applicability. One solution approach is the gas diffusion electrode (GDE).

In GDEs, a large phase boundary between the liquid electrolyte phase, electrode, and gas phase is maintained by hydrophobic materials while keeping the diffusion pathways short.

However, for organic electrolytes, this has so far hardly been applied due to the undesirable wetting of the used materials.

In the joint project GDE4OES, therefore, the position of the phase boundary within complex electrode grids is to be set by adjusting the wetting of the network and the differential pressure between the gas and liquid phases.

Both the structure of the electrode as well as the operating parameters and the cell concept will be developed.

The partners combine expertise in the production of complex metal mesh structures, material characterization, deposition of catalytic layers, electrochemical characterization and modeling, as well as fluid dynamic simulations.

Subproject
In close coordination with the partners, the GDE layer structure is to be investigated and improved.

For this purpose, a detailed simulation of the wetting of complex lattice structures is to be developed and validated based on reconstructed structures from experiments.

In the modeling, the possibly non-homogeneous wetting properties of the lattice will be also considered, as well as the surface tension at the gas-liquid interface.

A model reduction is aimed at to accelerate the simulation. Based on this, novel, targeted lattice structures are to be developed and tested by simulation and mathematical optimization.

Tasks

Detailed modeling of the twophase system.
Development and implementation of the simulation environment.
Creation of calculation grids for the discretization of equations.
Conducting simulations and comparison with provided experimental data.
Reduction of calculation time through reduction of model equations.
Implementation of gradient methods for mathematical optimization.
Evaluation of calculations and formulation of proposals for improved lattices.

Requirements:

M.Sc. in Engineering, Physics or Computational Engineering.
Interest in fluid dynamics, numerical mathematics and programming, computational fluid dynamics, highperformance computing, and corresponding knowledge.