Tage Maltby joined PoreLab and the department of Chemistry at NTNU on November 10th, 2022 as PhD candidate. This is a 4-year contract. Tage holds a MSc in industrial chemistry with a major focused on non-equilibrium thermodynamics and mathematical modeling. His PhD is financed through the newly established FME HYDROGENi under the Research Area 2 (RA2) that aims to enable efficient transport and storage of H2 and H2 carriers.
His supervisor is Professor Øivind Wilhelmsen
Tage introduces his PhD as follow:
During my Ph.D. I will investigate Novel quantum refrigerant mixtures for energy efficient hydrogen liquefaction. The main goal will be to develop new, accurate molecular based thermodynamic models for quantum mixed refrigerants.
Large-scale transport across long distances requires that hydrogen is in a dense phase. A promising candidate, both from a cost and energy point-of-view is liquid hydrogen (LH2), as it gives superior flexibility in the receiving end with respect to purity, pressurisation, distribution, and usage. The energy requirement for this process is large, but a key enabler for reducing this energy requirement is the utilization of quantum refrigerants, consisting of H2, neon, and helium.
Several areas will need to be addressed during the project to learn more about these refrigerants. The topics of research will be to map the risk of solid-formation of neon at the lowest temperatures, improve upon the “SAFT-VRQ Mie” equation of state (EOS) for lower temperatures, apply square gradient theory to refrigerants to determine the surface tensions of these fluid mixtures, and to perform molecular simulations of refrigerants using quantum path integral sampling.