The Technische Universiteit Eindhoven (TU/e) offers the following Post-doc (PD) position
Development of digital twins for industrial heat pumpsat Energy Technology & Fluid Dynamics (ETFD), Department of Mechanical Engineering (ME)
ScopeIndustry is facing huge challenges to realize the transition to a nearly CO2-neutral industry in 2050. Integration of industrial heat pumps that upgrade waste heat to process heat is one of an array of potential solutions to enable this. Compression heat-pump technology has been developed to such a level that market introduction for heating purposes is possible in the near future. However, two main challenges hamper this market introduction. First, industrial heat-pump technology has not yet reached the status of proven technology for end-users. Know-how is lacking with respect to its integration into industrial processes and its performance under industrial conditions. Second, current industrial heat pumps are mainly developed for refrigeration purposes instead of heating purposes. This leads to uncertainty at heat-pump manufacturers regarding the purpose for which to develop heat pumps (i.e. refrigeration or heating) and the corresponding expertise and know-how.
ProjectThe 2-year PD project at ETFD is part of a larger-scale research project that seeks to facilitate the above market introduction by the development of industrial heat-pump technology for heating purposes to the end-user level. The main goal of the PD project is the development of digital twins for prototype heat pumps developed at the Dutch national laboratories (TNO) in order to enable their integration into industrial processes. This involves realizing the following subgoals:
- Development of first-principles models for the simulation of system-level dynamic behaviour of heat pumps and their implementation in programming environments such as e.g. Matlab or Modelica. Essential to this model development are (i) model calibration via system identification using data from the prototype heat pumps and (ii) model reduction.
- In-depth characterization and analysis of the system-level behaviour under dynamic operating conditions using methods and concepts from nonlinear dynamics.
- Development of advanced (nonlinear) control strategies for regulation of the heat pumps based on the above modelling and characterization of the system-level dynamics.
- Performance analysis of the control strategies for the prototype heat pumps.