Hydrogen: A Seemingly Simple Fuel, Speaker: Heinz Pitsch

Combustion Webinar 03/20/2021, Speaker: Heinz Pitsch

The desired rise of electricity production from renewable energy sources increases the need for appropriate energy storage thus promoting the use of hydrogen as a carbon-free energy carrier. One way to integrate hydrogen into the existing energy infrastructure is its thermochemical energy conversion. However, several challenges arise for combustion processes that involve hydrogen. The combustion behavior of lean premixed hydrogen flames is significantly affected by flame-intrinsic instabilities, which substantially change flame dynamics, heat release rates, and flame speed. These aspects are particularly relevant for safety considerations to avoid flash back, but can be also exploited to increase thermal efficiencies. Here, we will discuss challenges and opportunities for hydrogen combustion using data from DNS and experiments with a focus on intrinsic flame instabilities and their interaction with turbulent combustion.

Prof. Pitsch has been the Director of the Institute for Combustion Technology since 2010. His main research interests are in the fields of combustion theory, combustion chemistry, turbulence, and multi-phase flows with application to technical combustion systems. He has published over 200 papers in archival journals. He is a Fellow of the International Combustion Institute and the American Physical Society. In 2015, he has received the prestigious Advanced Research Grant of the European Research Council. For the recent 37th International Symposium on Combustion, he served as one of the two program co-chairs and he is co-editor in chief of the journal Applications in Energy and Combustion Science.