Engineering Doctorate on Electricity-to-Heat conversion

The post-master designers program is a prestigious two-year salaried program in the field of technological design, leading to an Engineering Doctorate (EngD) degree. It develops the trainee's capabilities to work within a professional engineering context, in an application- and system-design-oriented setting. For more information, please check https://www.tue.nl/en/education/graduate-school/pdeng-at-tue/ .

Project context
For many industrial processes is required to provide high temperature heat derived from emission-free sources. One way to provide such is by converting electricity from renewable sources (wind and solar PV) into high-temperature heat using Joule heating of wide- bandgap semiconductors such as silicon carbide (SiC). PTGe, an R&D company spin-off from TU/e (www.ptgeindhoven.nl ), together with an industrial partner, aims in this project to develop such SiC heater able to convert high voltage power into heat at defined operating conditions. The EngD trainee will be employed at PTGe, working in a multidisciplinary team in very close collaboration with a team of experts from the industrial partner.

Project description
At PTGe there is already initial data available on the concept of using SiC for conversion of electricity to heat. The EngD candidate is expected to extend the literature survey on the different SiC-based heating elements, to design and assemble a High voltage setup for testing the electricity-to-heat conversion of the heating element and to collect experimental data with the developed setup. Attention will be paid on the dependence of the electrical and thermal properties of the heater on the SiC grades type (including impurity level, crystal structure). The effect of the applied electric field, temperature and gas environment will be investigated as well. The candidate is expected also to support the study of (long-term) aging mechanisms in the heating element and their mitigation.