 | Sophia Haussener |
Multi-physical transport in porous media for energy applications
Meso-structured, porous materials exhibit favorable charge, heat, and mass transport properties and are used as absorbers, heat exchangers, insulators, reaction sites, electrodes and/or reactants in a wide variety of applications ranging from chemical processing, (photo)electrochemistry, combustion, filtering, to concentrated solar reactor technology. The transport properties of these materials largely depend on the meso-structure of the material and significantly affect its combined transport and ultimately the performance of the device. For example, electrochemical reactors for CO2 reduction show significant variation in activity and selectrivity dependent on the (anistropic) mesostructure of the gas diffusion electrode or porous thermal storage devices made of phase change material show significant variation in capacity and discharge time dependent on the mesostructure. In-depth understanding of the structure-property relation followed by pore-engineering of the materials used in the applications is therefore of fundamental importance to further improvements in performance. I will discuss decoupled and coupled pore-level numerical approaches for transport characterization and estimation of the local heterogeneity, discuss the use of neural networks for rapid performance assessment and optimization, and inverse experimental-numerical approaches for the characterization of the transport in porous media in extreme conditions.
About Sophia Haussener
Sophia Haussener is an Associate Professor heading the Laboratory of Renewable Energy Science and Engineering at the Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL). She received her MSc (2007) and PhD (2010) in Mechanical Engineering from ETH Zurich. Between 2011 and 2012, she was a postdoctoral researcher at the Joint Center of Artificial Photosynthesis (JCAP) and the Energy Environmental Technology Division of the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL). She is a member of EPFL’s research award commission and of EPFL’s Academic Strategic Committee. She has published over 100 articles in peer-reviewed journals and conference proceedings, and 2 books. She has been awarded the ETH medal (2011), the Dimitris N. Chorafas Foundation award (2011), the ABB Forschungspreis (2012), a Starting Grant of the Swiss National Science Foundation (2014), the Prix Zonta (2015), the Global Change Award (2017), the Raymond Viskanta Award on Radiative Transfer (2019), and the Yellott award (2024). In 2024, she has been named one of Cell Press’ 50 Scientist that inspire. She is a co-founder of the startup SoHHytec aiming at commercializing photoelectrochemical hydrogen production. She is the former chair of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers’ (ASME) Solar Energy Division (2018), a former member of the Scientific Advisory Council of the Helmholtz Zentrum (2016-2022), a member of the scientific board of the Liquid Sunlight Alliance, and a member of the Ethics Board of Arete Ethik Invest.
Her current research is focused on providing design guidelines for thermal, thermochemical, and photoelectrochemical energy conversion reactors through multi-physics modeling and demonstrations. Her research interests include: thermal sciences and radiative transfer, fluid dynamics, charge transfer, and thermo/electro/photochemistry in complex multi-phase media on multiple scales.
