All projects by Prof. Detlef Lohse (UT):
Heat and mass transfer in dispersed multiphase turbulence with catalytic particles
Plasmonic, catalytic, and electrolysis bubble nucleation & growth
Making porous supraparticles for catalysis
Making use of diffusiophoresis for enhanced mass transports off spatially inhomogeneous catalysts: experiments
1st supervisor and 1st promotor: Prof. Rob Lammertink
Co-promotor: TBA
Affiliation: University of Twente
Research theme: Catalyst Diagnostics to Develop More Active Catalysts
Catalytic reactions are hindered by insufficient transport of the reaction products away from the often expensive catalyst. Here we suggest to achieve an enhanced yield with less catalytic surface, simply by enhancing the hydrodynamic transport away from the surface through spatial inhomogeneities of the catalyst, namely changing areas with an active catalyst with those without any catalyst at all.
This will lead to concentration gradients along the surface which will induce a lateral diffusiophoretic respective diffusioosmotic flow which can lead to convective flow patterns away from the surface and thus enhancing the transport away from the catalyst. This in turn will lead to a higher reaction rate. The aim of this project is to (i) quantitative describe this process by comparing controlled experiments and simulations in 2D, (ii) to optimize the pattern of the catalyst to achieve optimal flow with as small catalytic region as possible and (iii) to apply this concept also to 3D catalyst (porous media). This subproject is experimental; there is a numerical counterpart.
Keywords:
- Catalysts
- Diffusiophoresis
- Immersed boundary method
- Mass transfer
- Surface patterning
Making use of diffusiophoresis for enhanced mass transports off spatially inhomogeneous catalysts: numerics & theory
1st supervisor and 1st promotor: Prof. Detlef Lohse
2nd supervisor and 2nd promotor: Prof. Robert Verzicco
3rd promotor: TBA
Affiliation: University of Twente
Research theme: Catalyst Diagnostics to Develop More Active Catalysts
Catalytic reactions are hindered by insufficient transport of the reaction products away from the often expensive catalyst. Here we suggest to achieve an enhanced yield with less catalytic surface, simply by enhancing the hydrodynamic transport away from the surface through spatial inhomogeneities of the catalyst, namely changing areas with an active catalyst with those without any catalyst at all.
This will lead to concentration gradients along the surface which will induce a lateral diffusiophoretic respective diffusioosmotic flow which can lead to convective flow patterns away from the surface and thus enhancing the transport away from the catalyst. This in turn will lead to a higher reaction rate. The aim of this project is to (i) quantitative describe this process by comparing controlled experiments and simulations in 2D, (ii) to optimize the pattern of the catalyst to achieve optimal flow with as small catalytic region as possible and (iii) to apply this concept also to 3D catalyst (porous media). This subproject is numerical; there is an experimental counterpart.
Keywords:
- Catalysts
- Diffusiophoresis
- Immersed boundary method
- Mass transfer
- Surface patterning
Transport of mass, momentum and heat in multi-component turbulent particle laden reactive flows: Numerical simulations on the mesoscale
1st supervisor and 1st promotor: Prof. Robert Verzicco (UT)
2nd promotor: Prof. Detlef Lohse (UT)
2nd supervisor: Assistant Prof. Richard Stevens (UT)
3rd promotor: Prof. Hans Kuipers (TU/e)
Affiliation: University of Twente
Research theme: Smart Biomass Conversion
Dispersed multiphase flow is omnipresent in catalytic reactions, e.g. in the Fischer-Tropsch synthesis. Here, controlling heat and mass transfer are the crucial objectives to achieve. Presently, this control is incomplete and a lot is done by trial- and error.
The aim of this project is develop numerical techniques to master heat and mass transfer in dispersed multiphase flow, and to validate the method against controlled experiments performed in TUE and in UT. The employed method is the immersed boundary method, coupled with a highly efficient 2nd order finite difference scheme. The code is suited for parallelization on 10000’s of nodes.
Keywords:
- Dispersed multiphase flow
- Heat transfer
- Mass transfer
- Immersed boundary methods
- Bubbles
Heat and mass transfer in dispersed multiphase turbulence with catalytic particles
1st promotor and 2nd supervisor: Prof. Detlef Lohse
1st supervisor and co-promotor: Assistant Prof. Sander Huisman
2nd promotor: TBA
3rd supervisor: Associate Prof. Chao Sun
Affiliation: University of Twente
Research theme: Smart Biomass Conversion
Dispersed multiphase flows with bubbles and particles are very relevant in flows with chemical (catalytic) reactions, as the bubbles complicate the control of heat and mass transfer in the flow, and so does the presence of catalysts. An extremely relevant example is the Fischer-Tropsch processes. Here the flows are far from laminar, but very turbulent. These flows exhibit a broad range of scales (from micrometers for the catalysts to meters of the reactor). A constant supply of reactants is essential for efficient chemical reactions. Moreover, the egress of the products is also essential, as well as taking away the heat resulting from the reaction.
We propose to study the mixing of heat and mass inside a freely rising bubbly swarm, the effect of bubbles on such a flow, and the effects of salt on the bubbles dynamics, and make direct measurements of the heat and mass transport inside our newly constructed and operational vertical water tunnel.
Keywords:
- Heat Transfer
- Mass transfer
- Multiphase flow
- Turbulence
- Catalytic
Plasmonic, catalytic, and electrolysis bubble nucleation & growth
1st supervisor and 1st promotor: Prof. Detlef Lohse
1st supervisor and 3rd promotor: Prof. Xuehua Zhang
2nd supervisor and 2nd promotor: Prof. Harold Zandvliet
Affiliation: University of Twente
Research theme: Catalyst Diagnostics to Develop More Active Catalysts
The central theme of this project is nucleation and phase transitions, mainly of gas and vapor bubbles on surfaces, in the context of catalysis, electrolysis, and on plasmonic nanoparticles. Prior work in aqueous solutions will be extended to non-aqueous solutions of interest for catalytic reactions.
Questions to ask are: How to avoid or at least delay the often detrimental bubble nucleation? How do gas and vapor bubbles nucleate in binary and ternary liquids with different material properties? And a conceptionally very related question: Can we employ similar nucleation processes as those to create nanobubbles and nanodroplets also to create nanoparticles with catalytic properties, which would have a tremendous surface area and would thus be very active?
Keywords:
- Plasmonic bubbles
- catalysis
- Bubble nucleation
- Electrolysis
Making porous supraparticles for catalysis
1st supervisor and 2nd promotor: Prof. Xuehua Zhang
2nd supervisor and 1st promotor: Prof. Detlef Lohse
3rd promotor: TBA
Affiliation: University of Twente
Research theme: Catalyst Diagnostics to Develop More Active Catalysts
We want to explore a new and original bottom-up technology to create a self-assembled extremely porous hierarchical catalyst and to show the efficiency of this catalyst. It is based on the so-called ouzo effect, with which nanodroplets nucleate out of a ternary liquid of appropriate mutual solubilites. The idea is that nanoparticles attach to the nucleating nanodroplets. On further evaporation the nanoparticles will form very porous hierarchical structure which can be produced in large quantities and which have great potential as heterogenous catalysts.
Keywords:
- Catalyst
- Ouzo effect
- Hierarchical porous structure
- Droplet nucleation
Professor Detlef Lohse is Distinguished University Professor of the University of Twente (the Netherlands).
Lohse received his Diploma degree in Physics from the University of Bonn (Germany) in 1989, in the field of theoretical high energy physics. After obtaining his PhD degree on the theory of turbulence from the University of Marburg (Germany) in 1992 under the supervision of Professor Grossmann, Lohse has worked in the period 1993-1995 as a postdoctoral fellow with Professor Kadanoff at the University of Chicago (USA). He became research assistant at the Department of Physics of the University of Marburg in 1995 and obtained his “Habilitation” in Theoretical Physics from the same university in 1997. In 1998, Detlef Lohse was a Heisenberg Fellow of the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft at the Ludwig-Maximilians University in Munich (Germany). He was promoted to full professor of physics of fluids at the University of Twente in 1998. Lohse (co-) authored ~ 340 publications in peer-reviewed journals with an average number of citations per paper of ~ 24 and a Hirsch index of 45.
He is the editor of Journal of Fluid Mechanics, Physica D, Nonlinearity, Journal of Turbulence, Journal of Statistical Mechanics: Theory and Experiment, and Physik Journal, and was editor and editorial board member of European Physical Journal B, Physical Review E and Annual Reviews of Fluid Mechanics. He obtained an ERC Advanced grant (2011) from the European Research Council and he leads four FOM programs. He has received various research awards, including the 2012 G.K. Batchelor Prize of the International Union of Theoretical and Applied Mechanics and Journal of Fluid Mechanics, the 2005 Spinoza Award of The Netherlands Science Foundation (NWO), the 2009 Simon Stevin Meesterschap Prize from the Stichting Technologische Wetenschappen (STW), the 2011 Physica Prize of the Dutch Physics Society, the 2012 Wim Nieuwpoort Award for Scientific Computation, and the 2012 AkzoNobel Science Award.
The research of Lohse’s Physics of Fluids group, focusing on granular matter; and micro- and nanofluidics, is characterized by the direct interaction of experiment, theory, and numerics, is problem-driven and often uses methods or knowledge from neighbouring science fields.
Lohse is an elected Member of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Sciences (2005-onwards), the Koninklijke Hollandsche Maatschappij der Wetenschappen (2012-onwards), the German Academy of Sciences “Leopoldina” (2002-onwards), Fellow of the American Physical Society (2002-onwards) and of the Institute of Physics (2004-onwards). He was knighted by the Dutch Queen as “Ridder in de Orde van de Nederlandse Leeuw” in 2010. Lohse serves on various national and international boards and panels for research, including member and now vice-chairman of the Executive Board of Stichting voor Fundamenteel Onderzoek van de Materie (FOM) and also of NWO-physics, Member at Large of the APS-Division of Fluid Mechanics Executive Board, and Chairman of the Euromech Turbulence Conference Committee.
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