Context and challenge: Hygroscopic hydrogel is a promising material, highly relevant for off-grid passive cooling and clean water production. Understanding of sorption kinetics in the hydrogel still remains limited, which hinders design optimization of distributed coolers/water harvesters.
Expected activities:
– Learn and refine the existing hygroscopic hydrogel synthesis protocol.
– Test sorption-desorption cycles under various airâflow condition to identify and characterize diffusionâlimited regimes in hygroscopic hydrogels.
– Create and execute a design of experiments varying hydrogel properties (polymer chemistry, crosslinker density, salt type and content, thickness) and analyze their impact on sorptionâdesorption kinetics.
What we expect:
– Background in thermodynamics or heat and mass transfer is preferred
– Basic programming and data analysis skills (e.g. Python, MATLAB)
What you will learn:
– Experience in material synthesis and characterization
– Design of experiments and data analysis
– Scientific communications in the lab
Contact: Gautier Rouaze ([email protected])