Friday, March 16, 2018
2:00pm-3:00pm
Mechanical Engineering Building, MC102
5 King's College Road
Speaker: Bruno Auvity
Affiliation: University of Nantes, France
Abstract
Professor Bruno Auvity’s current research activities aim at improving the efficiency of energy systems and processes as well as their reliability. On one hand, they are focused on the physical understanding of heat and mass transfer phenomena occurring in these systems and on the other hand, on the energy optimization at the system level. At the moment, two energy systems are at the heart of his activity:
– PEM fuel cells
– Organic Rankine Cycles.
For PEM fuel cells, the current researches address the heat and water management developing ex situ approaches. At the Gas Diffusion Layer/ Gas Flow Field level, the focus is placed on gas/liquid dynamics including capillarity and wettability effects. At the stack level, efforts are focused on the detection of cells state-of-health using Electrochemical Impedance Spectroscopy combined with multiphysics modeling. Over the last 10 years, he has been involved in the design and optimization of hydrogen power trains for prototype car running energetic races. This work deals with the integration of PEM fuel cell stacks in power trains, energy management of stack auxiliaries and development of optimized DC/DC controller.
As far as the Organic Rankine Cycle is concerned, efforts are put on the combined technical and economic optimization for the energy recovery of low-temperature sources (industrial waste, geothermal sources,…) and on the thermal and hydraulic design of condensers and steam generators.
Biosketch
Prof. Bruno Auvity, PhD, is currently Full Professor at the University of Nantes and Head of the Thermal and Energy Science Department of the Graduate School of Engineering of the University of Nantes since 2014. He joined the University of Nantes in 2002 after a one-year post doctoral fellowship at Princeton University in the Gas Dynamics Laboratory. In 2009-2010, he was invited professor at CNR-ITAE (Messina, Italie) funded by a Marie-Curie Intra European Fellowship grant. His current research activities aim at improving the efficiency of energy systems and processes as well as their reliability.
