C4T is welcoming Professor Weeratunge Malalasekera to give a seminar on 27 March:
Hydrogen as a Future Fuel and Storage Medium for Renewable Energy
Professor Weeratunge Malalasekera
Tuesday 27 March 2018
5 pm – 6 pm
CREATE Seminar Room
Level 2, CREATE Tower
1 Create Way, Singapore
Register via http://whoozin.com/MEP-XF6-GGDH (registration is open to all)
Abstract: Due to world population growth, growing industrial development, improvements in living standards, emerging technologies (such as electric vehicles) and the growth in the domestic and industrial use of modern equipment, the current growing trend in electricity demand and consumption will continue long into the future. The management of electrical energy supply to meet the growing demand without contributing more to the greenhouse gas problem is a major task. To reduce greenhouse gases, more and more renewable sources of electrical energy are being added to networks. However, these new sources of supplies can be intermittent and variable. Wind, for example, is a valuable source of green energy but its availability is very variable. Solar energy is available during the daytime subjected to sunshine but it is not available during the night. Usually, peak demand of electricity for industrial customers is during the daytime and the peak demand for domestic customers is during early evenings.
Growth and sustainability of future renewable energies, therefore, requires the management of electricity networks using smart grid technologies. It also requires options to store energy and regenerate during demand periods. On a small scale, options are required to have self-contained integrated systems to store energy. Hydrogen in this context is considered to be the clean fuel of the future which does not contribute to greenhouse gases. Moreover, hydrogen has been recognised as a possible energy storage medium. Excess electricity from wind and solar could be converted to hydrogen by electrolysis. Depending on the application, hydrogen could be stored using various techniques.
In this lecture, the role of hydrogen in the context of renewable energy is explained and the methods of hydrogen storage options are discussed. Properties of hydrogen as a fuel are further explained, as are its advantages and disadvantages. Research undertaken into hydrogen storage systems, combustion and safety aspects of hydrogen is further highlighted.
Biography: Professor Weeratunge Malalasekera is Professor of Computational Fluid Flow and Heat Transfer at Loughborough University. He obtained his PhD from the University of London and went on to become a research assistant at Imperial College, London, before joining Loughborough University as a lecturer in 1989. He has expertise in energy and related technologies, computational fluid dynamics modelling and simulations of engine combustion, radiative heat transfer (including the Monte Carlo, discrete transfer and discrete ordinates methods) and furnace simulations.
Other research interests include hydrogen applications and safety, further modelling work in combustion and turbulence, fluid dynamics modelling of industrial flow problems and the development of smart technologies, in particular home energy automation. He is a co-author of An Introduction to Computational Fluid Dynamics: The Finite Volume Method (Pearson Education Ltd).
