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Abstract

To combat global warming, urgent action is needed to reduce carbon emissions. Our research group is making advancements and important contributions in three key areas: enabling round-the-clock electricity generation from concentrated solar power plants by implementing high-temperature thermal energy storage, decarbonizing building heating with thermal energy storage in chemical bonds and pioneering an electrochemical process to capture carbon from ocean water. For the next generation of concentrated solar power plants, sand-like ceramic materials are leading contenders as low-cost, inert, and thermally stable heat transfer and thermal storage media.  We understand and predict their heat transfer behavior including thermal radiation for granular flows of these particles in heat-exchanger. Unique modeling capabilities have been developed to combine physics-based and data-driven radiative transport models with discrete particle motion tracking provides unparalleled capabilities to probe materials—morphology—flow—radiation coupling in these systems. For the second application, I will highlight materials-to-reactor scale performance predictions for the tradeoffs between power and energy densities with salt-based thermochemical energy storage materials. Specifically, we report on model predictions and experimental measurements with strontium bromide salts impregnated in a porous vermiculite matrix, which discharges heat during hydration with moisture from the air, and charges during dehydration by releasing that moisture. We identify powerful dimensionless scaling principles to predict the power versus capacity tradeoffs across different combinations of reactor design and operating conditions. Finally, I will touch on our recent work that proposes and predicts the performance of a new, reversible, electrochemical pH shifting using hydrogen and redox salt cycling process for CO₂ removal from ocean water. Because one of the steps in this process is power producing, when combined with variable electricity pricing, it enables sizeable cost savings in operational electricity costs. Collectively, these innovations inform new and improved materials and reactor designs to enable low cost and high efficiency decarbonization technologies.

About the speaker

Rohini Bala Chandran is an Assistant Professor in Mechanical Engineering at the University of Michigan since January 2018. Previously, she was a postdoctoral research fellow at Lawrence Berkeley National Lab and obtained an M.S. (2010) and Ph.D. (2015) from the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities, in Mechanical Engineering. At Michigan, Prof. Bala Chandran leads the Transport and Reaction Engineering for Sustainable Energy Lab (TREE Lab) to pursue research at the intersection of thermal and chemical sciences.  

Dr. Bala Chandran is a recipient of the ASME Bergles-Rohsenow Young Investigator Award (2023), NSF-CAREER award (2022), a Doctoral New Investigator award from the American Chemical Society Petroleum Research Fund (2021), and one of 100 selected attendees at the US Frontiers of Engineering meeting organized by the National Academy of Engineering (2020).