Panel Discussion

Key point in my past research was the technological demonstration under real field conditions of the entire process chain to drop-in fuels from concentrated sunlight and ambient air. Crucial to this accomplished milestone is the serial integration of three thermochemical conversion processes: the co-extraction of CO2 and H2O directly from air, the solar redox co-splitting of CO2 and H2O to produce a desired syngas mixture, and the conversion of syngas to liquid hydrocarbons.

Publication: Schäppi, R. et al. Drop-in Fuels from Sunlight and Air. Nature (2021).

This research has been continued with an experimental parametric study to determine how key performance indicators such as the specific fuel yield, molar conversion, and solar-to-fuel energy efficiency, vary as a function of the operational parameters and how the syngas composition can be tailored for FT-synthesis by selecting adequate operational conditions. Another focus was on the control and automation of the fuel system where a feedback control loop based on an auto-optimisation scheme performing online mass and energy balances was implemented. I also developed a dynamic grey box model of the solar fuel system based on energy and mass conservation equations that allows further insights to the system performance.

Future research interests include further improvements in reactor engineering, development and testing of lab-scale or pilot-scale reactors and experimental facilities, automation and control of reactor systems, system integration and analysis.

Teaching Interests

I always felt it being a privilege to be able to teach students and to share the knowledge and passion for our filed of research. I see myself teaching undergraduate courses for example in thermodynamics or graduate level courses in the field of renewable energy systems, solar energy or reactor engineering. Additionally to teaching courses close to what I previously thought (see below), I would also be highly interested in developing new courses in the field or getting involved in established courses.

During my time as a PhD candidate at ETH Zurich I had the opportunity and pleasure to teach the tutorials in the undergraduate course “Thermodynamics III” (radiative heat transfer, heat exchangers, gas mixtures and psychrometry) as well as the graduate course “Energy systems and power engineering” (principles of solar radiation, solar flat plate collectors, solar concentrating optics, concentrated solar power CSP, solar photovoltaics PV, solar fuels) for a continuing 6 years. To strengthen my didactic skills, I attended various courses and lectures in didactics with a focus on didactics for engineers. In this time, I also had the pleasure to serve as a supervisor of several students performing their graduate thesis. Teaching has always been something important to me and part of my extracurricular activities also a student, allowing me to gain years of experience in teaching math, physics and science for pre-university level students, both in individual tutoring as well as semester courses.