The FIP Academy held another knowledge sharing seminar

Christian Teicht focussed his presentation on concepts, design and applications of thermochemical heat storage and conversion systems. As a PhD student at Fraunhofer ICT, he is researching systems based on physiosorption, or physical adsorption.

"Molecules of the working medium, also called adsorptive, are adsorbed on the surface of a porous medium, the adsorbent. This is an exothermic process whose heat can be used for heating purposes. However, this process can also be used as a thermal compressor for the construction of thermally driven heat pumps," said Teicht.

In his lecture, he discussed the two challenges that exist in designing adsorption-based thermochemical heat storage and heat transformation systems. "First, a suitable adsorbent must be selected that can be charged and discharged under the given process conditions, and second, the power density of the system must be evaluated and optimized," pointed out Teicht, who presented, among other things, a database for automatic processing of adsorption equilibrium data. This database already contains a range of experimental data and can be used to select the best adsorbent material for the given boundary conditions. 

The study of thermophysical, thermodynamic and kinetic behaviour of a wide range of materials in solid and liquid phases (in melt) in a wide temperature range from minus 180 to 2000 degrees Celsius was presented by Bedřich Smetana from the Department of Chemistry and Physico-Chemical Processes at FMST. "Our department is involved in the study of inorganic and organic materials - for example, metal alloys (nickel-based superalloys, non-ferrous metal alloys such as solder, titanium alloys) and other metallic materials, and oxide systems. However, we are also interested in ceramic materials, nanomaterials, energetic materials and others," said Smetana. Properties studied include phase transformation temperatures and heats, heat capacities, melt surface properties, viscosity, and more. The knowledge gained is essential for many technological applications.

The next FIP Academy seminar will take place on 2 June.