PhD Student Position in Gasification of Biomass – Gas Cleaning, Chalmers University of Technology, Sweden

The Division of Energy Technology within the Department of Energy and Environment at Chalmers University of Technology invites applications for a position as PhD student.

The research within the Department of Energy and Environment covers a wide field within the areas energy and environment/sustainable development, from a global perspective to industrial, building, and product scale. The research fields include energy technology and energy conversion, conducted both experimentally and theoretically, and development, use and evaluation of methods and tools for analysis of technical systems, regarding both environment/sustainable development and energy. In total some 150 persons are working in six divisions at the department.

Gasification of biomass is seen as one of the most promising technologies for the production of renewable fuels that can replace fossil fuels in all energy sectors – transport, industry and heat and power supply. At the division of Energy Technology at Chalmers we work with several industrial partners to take forward knowledge and new technologies to meet the request of the society to break today’s dependence of fossil fuels.

The efficient cleaning of producer gas from gasification is the key for the efficient production of 2nd generation fuels biofuels such like dimethyl ester (DME), Fischer-Tropsch-diesel (FT diesel) and substitute natural gas (SNG). However, present cleaning technologies are costly and energy intensive preventing the introduction of these fuels. Goal is the development of a low-cost, simple and reliable gas cleaning system that breaks down tars (long hydro carbons) and removes simultaneously sulfur.

The solution of this task is vital for the commercialization of the production of large quantities of biofuels (methane, methanol, synthetic Diesel, etc) from biomass. The technology is based on Chemical Looping Reforming (CLR) and is funded by E.On, directed strategic governmental funding and Swedish research council.

Information about the gasifier and the gas cleaning activities at Chalmers

CLR is a special application of Chemical Looping Combustion and more about the CLC activities at Chalmers

Job description

The work will primarily have an experimental focus on the potential of using different bed materials, such as different ores and manufactured materials based on, for example, nickel. The work will as well include work dedicated to the optimization of the process emphasized toward scale up of the CLR process. The work will be carried out at the division of Energy Technology Department of Energy and Environment.

This PhD project will be a part of the gasification research at Chalmers, which is a group of more than ten researchers.

Required qualifications

A required background is a master of science in Chemical Engineering with Engineering Physics, Chemical Engineering, Biological engineering or similar.

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