(6ef) A Structured Approach to the Design and Optimization of Sustainable Energy Systems

My research interests lie in the design and optimization of energy systems, at scales from the individual unit to the entire supply chain. My passion is to develop and improve sustainable energy sources to reduce the world’s reliance on fossil fuels. I plan on pursuing projects in this sector to improve the performance, economic viability, and efficiency of these systems as applied to alternative energy sources to provide a more sustainable energy future.

Proposed Research:

As a faculty researcher, I seek to apply a systems perspective to the plant design process, with the goal of facilitating the design and development of sustainable energy production. My vision is to begin at the equipment level, focusing on features that affect the power, stability, cost, and environmental impact of a unit. With success, I will expand the ideas to whole-plant design.

It can be difficult to know a priori how design decisions will impact the overall performance of a unit operation. One approach is to develop detailed theoretical models that enable all design decisions to be considered in simulation, but this is time consuming and computationally intensive.

As an alternative, this work will explore the creation of a higher order framework of system components to assist in understanding how design decisions interact to impact performance. The framework will combine component data, a mass and energy flow network, and constraints from reduced order physics models to estimate the impact of a design on the performance of the final system. System optimization will then push the framework to suggest a design which meets the desired conditions, such as maximum power or minimum cost, given environmental restrictions.

As a complement to this investigation, an experimental program will provide a testbed to assess and refine the theoretical developments. In particular, a research program for designing flow batteries with potential for large energy storage will be undertaken. Flow batteries are a promising alternative for energy storage that offers great potential for scalability and flexibility in application. The testbed will be used to gather component impact data, validate the design framework, and explore methods of increasing the power density and longevity of flow batteries through flow field design. This will flex the capabilities of the design framework, with the goal of boosting flow battery utility and viability as alternative energy storage.

Initially, experiments will identify the impact of key design decisions on the flow field to better understand how individual design characteristics affect the power density and longevity tradeoff. It will be important to complement this experimental work with electrochemical and fluid dynamics modelling of the reactants in the flow field to understand and predict where there may be dead spots or areas of low flow. This will improve the design process and identify ways that the designs may be changed to improve stability and performance, for both the short and long term.

With success in these early efforts, research will expand to applying the framework to improve the robustness of energy supply chain networks. While supply chain network optimization offers a reliable method for finding solutions that are feasible and maximized (or minimized) for some objective, it does have a weakness that small differences in starting data can result in significant differences in the form of the optimized result.

The challenge is that similar values of the objective function can potentially correspond to several different supply chain frameworks, so a small difference in initial conditions can produce very different recommendations for the final design. While this is not always a concern, it can be problematic, for example, in high investment situations. Restrictions imposed by local zoning can also skew results when a portion of a supply chain moves in or out of that area.

Envisioned is a supply chain optimization framework that considers these and other practical constraints in the formulation of the design. For example, can a locational consistency serve as a soft constraint within the framework? And can it be introduced without the need for significant user effort? If successful, the result will be a robust network optimization framework.

Previous Work:

My postdoctoral research has focused on system design and optimization as applied to energy and process systems. This research has explored a range of applications for these techniques, starting with supply chain network optimization for biomass to produce bioproducts. The work developed techniques to incorporate spatially distributed, inherently variable data into the optimization without losing information to aggregation. This systems research extended into design of systems, as well, with a project focused on the design and life cycle analysis of a system to produce an alternative green process for a currently petroleum-based polymer. The vein of research continues with work on the system design and operation for a gigawatt scale electrolyzer system for optimal use of variable wind power. Ultimately, the unifying theme of my work is the optimal use of sustainable resources.

My PhD research focused on design of the gas distributor of polymer electrolyte membrane (PEM) fuel cell systems to increase the system power density. The main focus of the work was on interdigitated gas distributors, which are an alternative to the conventional, parallel-channel gas distributors used in many fuel cell system designs. In interdigitated gas distributors, reactant flow is forced through the gas diffusion medium of the cell, bringing reactants closer to the catalyst layer and forcing liquid water out of the gas diffusion medium, thus reducing the diffusion distance. My research explored how gas distributor design parameters, including channel length, width, depth, and GDL type could be improved to optimize the performance characteristics of the fuel cell system, such as system power density, stability and water handling. The research sought to understand the importance and effect of these design parameters for fuel cell systems with interdigitated gas distributors using the conventional design as a baseline.

Teaching Interests:

A comprehensive engineering education produces graduates who are renaissance persons of engineering whose consideration of the world engages with their trade in transformative ways. Their education should resemble a pyramid: built on a broad, strong base of knowledge to foster versatile problem-solving skill, narrowing in scope as the curriculum culminates in a peak of field-specific training. Above all, graduates should be prepared for the challenges they will face, able to identify with scientific rigor their questions, ideas, and solutions, and capable of communicating these to diverse audiences. Effective teaching is driven by a fundamental desire for student success, both academically and in life.

I have had the privilege of serving as both mentor and teaching assistant at two universities in two countries, informing my development as a teacher in the classrooms where I have been the student. With each new responsibility, I have developed my own guiding ethos enriched by the perspectives of colleagues and students from many backgrounds. To educate effectively in a faculty role is to maintain a healthy coexistence of dichotomous ideas. Over-reliance on the theoretical leaves students lacking experience in its specific application — on the practical, lacking perspective in its broad application. Focusing on one point obsessively always comes at the expense of another: research furthers the bounds of knowledge and keeps the professor abreast of recent scholarship, where teaching accessibly provides students the cognitive tools to improve and motivates research. Across disciplines, reliance on feedback to inform introspective self-reflection is key to unlocking the ultimate test of teaching quality: whether students are provided a productive educational environment. Ultimately, a neglected balance leaves students potentially discouraged by the learning process: the ‘how’ and ‘why’ of the material is lost.

My experiences have well prepared me to actively maintain the equilibrium these tenets demand. My pedagogy will introduce foundational concepts with unique examples: some highly theoretical, others, far more experiential and hinging on applied example to current issues. Thorough preparation for teaching duties leaves time for the one-on-one interactions with students which inform mindful selection of class materials. Outside of the classroom, my research can only benefit from this investment, rejuvenated by the opportunity to interact with students from diverse backgrounds and think in a new paradigm. This approach will frame curricula in relation to other fields, clearly evidencing that topics in engineering do not stand alone, but interlock.

Catering to these vital balances is made more achievable where a cooperative faculty environment is driven by a central goal: to bolster student success across course levels. I look forward to opportunities to grow in my teaching voice. Shakespeare is credited with regarding the world as a stage. I think it’s a classroom.