Professorship in Renewable Energy Carriers

Prof. Aldo Steinfeld

The research program of the Professorship in Renewable Energy Carriers is aimed at the advancement of the thermal, thermochemical, and electrochemical engineering sciences applied in the field of renewable energy technology, with focus in:

• Radiation heat transfer in multi-phase chemical reacting flows.
• Second-Law (exergy) analysis of novel energy conversion processes.
• High-temperature thermochemical reactor engineering.

The thermodynamic fundamentals of energy conversion are applied in the process engineering development of novel, efficient, and clean energy technologies. The current research emphasis is in "Solar Chemistry": an interdisciplinary emerging field that deals with the utilization of concentrated solar power for the production of chemical energy carriers (e.g. solar hydrogen, solar methanol). Further areas of interest are the decarbonization of fossil fuels, the thermal recycling of energy-intensive materials, biofuels processing, and CO2 mitigation technologies. The Professorship has close collaboration with the Solar Technology Laboratory of the Paul Scherrer Institute. State-of-the-art experimental facilities include the ETH’s High-Flux Solar Simulator and the PSI’s Solar Furnace.