The section for Electrochemical Materials and Interfaces (EMI) at DTU Energy, Technical University of Denmark (DTU), invites application for a PhD scholarship in the area of Thermal Energy Storage.

The PhD Scholarship is supported by the Nordforsk organisation within the project “Neutrons for Heat Storage”. Three academic institutions, IFE (Norway) for the neutrons studies, KTH (Sweden) for the reactor designs and DTU (Denmark) for the material characterization and synthesis, together with AMMINEX Emissions Technology (Denmark) as industrial partner are parts of the project.

Responsibilities and tasks
To support the transition to fossil free society and economy, energy storage and particularly thermal energy storage has been identified as a strategic technology. Within the “Neutrons for Heat Storage” project, we will study and build a cost effective and compact thermochemical heat storage system based on ammonia salts (2-3 kWh storage capacity), thanks to the heat which can be stored and recovered from the desorption and absorption of the ammonia into the salts.

The successful candidate will be involved in the three different phases of the project.

1. Synthesis and structural characterization of the chosen ammonia salts to be used in the thermochemical heat storage system. Using combination of X-ray and Neutron diffraction, s/he will characterize structurally the different phases of the salts, with no ammonia, fully ammoniated and the possible intermediates. S/he will characterize the macrostructure developing during the swelling and shrinking of the salts.
2. Development of the storage tank – Neutron radiography will be performed on prototype reactor vessels during a 6-months stay at IFE (Norway). The obtained information will guide to improve the design of the reactor prototypes for which the student will have a three months stay at KTH (Sweden).
3. Building and testing of the Thermochemical Heat Storage system.

The candidate will participate in the ongoing effort to build up competences at IFE and in the Nordic region on the use of Neutron Imaging applied to energy materials. S/He will work in close collaboration with the academic and industrial partners, promoting long-term excellence and capacity building in research using neutrons including industrial applications.

Qualifications
Candidates should have a master’s degree in physics, chemistry or materials science or a similar degree with an academic level equivalent to a master’s degree in engineering.

A successful candidate:

• has good ability to work in a multi-disciplinary environment
• is able to work independently and take responsibility for progress and quality of projects
• has good writing and communication skills in English

We favour candidates with experience in instrumentation, in computational physics, chemistry and related areas.

Approval and Enrolment
The scholarships for the PhD degree are subject to academic approval, and the candidates will be enrolled in one of the general degree programmes of DTU. For information about the general requirements for enrolment and the general planning of the scholarship studies, please see the DTU PhD Guide.

Assessment
The assessment of the applicants will be made by Didier Blanchard, Peter Holtappels and Guangling Zhao

You can read more about “the Department” on www.energy.dtu.dk

Application
Please submit your online application no later than 15 February 2017.

To view the full announcement and to apply: www.career.dtu.dk

source:jobs.a.c.uk