Want to make an impact on the energy transition with advanced control techniques?
TUDelft / Dept. of Maritime & Transport Technology has a PhD vacancy open on control of innovative marine power generation systems based on fuel cells.
Over the last decade, fuel cells have started to receive increasing attention in the marine industry in order to reduce ship emissions. The Solid Oxide Fuel Cell (SOFC) is considered as a promising fuel cell type for long-haul shipping, since it can operate using various types of renewable fuels, such as liquefied natural gas, hydrogen, methanol or ammonia. SOFCs convert these fuels with high efficiency, while barely emitting pollutant emissions.
The ability of SOFCs to handle transient loads is so far still limited due to the risks associated with thermal stresses and overloading of stacks. Conventional feedback control of the cooling cathode airflow generally only allows slow power modulations to avoid adverse operating conditions in the stack. Advanced control strategies, such as model predictive control, could offer benefits in terms of increasing the transient capabilities of SOFCs without compromising the lifetime or the operational efficiency.
This PhD position investigates novel strategies for SOFC control. This includes development and validation of control oriented dynamic SOFC stack models, as well as development and evaluation of control approaches, such as model predictive control, for load following and thermal management of the stack. The approach may be validated with high-fidelity models, laboratory experiments and/or hardware-in-the-loop simulations.
More information:
https://www.tudelft.nl/over-tu-delft/werken-bij-tu-delft/vacatures/details?jobId=9220
