PhD scholarship in Magnetothermal energy harvesting from waste heat

Do you want to contribute to a future where we can harvest energy from waste heat using a novel magnetothermal device, that you will get to help realize? If yes, this PhD-position is exactly for you. At the Technical University of Denmark, Department of Energy Conversion and Storage (DTU Energy) we research how to harvest energy from a number of sources, and waste heat is particularly interesting because of the large amount of energy available from industrial processes. In fact, in the EU alone, the low grade waste heat amounts to more energy than 10 times the electricity consumption of Denmark. Harvesting part of this energy is therefore crucial for the green transition. Responsibilities and qualifications To harvest this low grade waste heat, we can make use of magnetic materials, as the magnetic properties of these will depend on temperature – cold materials will be magnetic, while hot materials will not. By changing the temperature of two magnetic materials using an alternating stream of waste heat in contact with these, the magnetic flux through a set of coils can be changed, thereby producing electricity – this is known as a magnetothermal process. This idea has existed since it was described by Nikola Tesla in 1889, but new powerful magnets and a novel design technique will allow us in this project to finally realize an efficient device for harvesting low grade waste heat. Your role as a PhD student will be to design, model and build an experimental magnetothermal energy harvesting device setup where we can test new designs of the various sub-components of the systems. The project has many aspects. You will work on building the device and testing this, but working on a numerical model of the system is also a potential option. The questions we are trying to answer are the following: What is the best design of the magnet, coils, and magnetic materials in the system? What is the best tradeoff between efficiency and power? What efficiency can we potentially reach with the device? At the end of the PhD project, we will have realized an experimental device in the lab that can produce power from a hot and cold stream – and that can be showcased to potential interested industries. The PhD project is part of a research project funded by the Independent Research Fund Denmark.