PhD Student Sorption Enhanced Ammonia Production

Updated: almost 2 years ago
Job Type: Temporary
Deadline: 01 Jul 2022

Department of Chemical Engineering and Chemistry
The Department of Chemical Engineering and Chemistry is one of the nine departments of the Eindhoven University of Technology (TU/e) established in 1957. The department has approximately 500 employees, 16 full professors, 370 undergraduate students and
about 170 graduate students (140 PhD and 30 design engineers). The department aspires to be an academic institution for education and research in chemical science and engineering that meets the highest international standards. The aim is to generate and to develop technology and scientific knowledge relevant for the long-term needs of society. Scientific curiosity and the use of newly generated knowledge are the main driving forces for the continuing enhancements of the three chosen fields of expertise: molecular, materials, and sustainable process engineering.

Project background
Hydrogen is an important factor in the EU quest to drastically reduce GHG emissions and curb its use of fossil fuels. The storage and transport of hydrogen, however, faces important challenges which hinder its broad application as an alternative and zero emission fuel. Storage of hydrogen as a gas typically requires high-pressure tanks (up to 700 bar tank pressure); storage of hydrogen as a liquid requires cryogenic temperatures because the boiling point of hydrogen at one atmosphere pressure is -253C. Therefore, for several applications, ammonia rises as a rather prominent vector if it can be produced efficiently. The production is traditionally bound by the constraints of thermodynamics, which require high synthesis pressures, as well as temperatures. Thus, NH3 is produced centralised/large-scaled.

HySTrAm (Hydrogen Storage and Transport using Ammonia) is a Horizon Europe funded project that builds on developing physical H2 storage materials, enabling short term storage (buffering renewables dynamics), as well as the 3 structural corner stones of flexible low pressure NH3: decreased Ru content catalysts, high temperature NH3 sorbents and induction-heated support granting (optimal) responsiveness. The project will demonstrate a compact containerised ammonia synthesis system which is based on two main consecutive stages:1) A short-term storage hydrogen vessel which will serve as a buffer to store and transport the hydrogen produced by electrolysis. Within the hydrogen vessel, new ultraporous material will be identified and optimised through machine learning technology 2) An ammonia synthesis reactor based on an improved the Haber-Bosch process where the stored hydrogen will react with nitrogen to form ammonia using the novel catalysts and sorbents developed in HySTrAm.

Project description
In this project, the PhD student will investigate and design a sorption enhanced reactor integrating the sorbents for the separation of ammonia with 3D structured catalysts for ammonia production at lower temperatures and pressures compared to industrial HB process.
A multi-scale approach will be used to design and develop ammonia sorbents for the adsorption at relatively high T. This system will operate with optimal kinetic and transport properties to effectively drive the selectivity towards ammonia.

The project will cover the following aspects:
1) material synthesis, characterization and testing
2) kinetic and mass transfer studies
3) reactor design and development using modeling and experimental validation of integrated system
4) techno-economic analysis



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