Education

Student projects

Bachelor, semester or master projects are available. Motivated students are encouraged to discuss their project ideas with Prof. Sophia Haussener, submit a short project proposal, or chose an available project from the list below. Interested students are encouraged to follow our master courses Advanced Heat Transfer and Solar Energy Conversion.

LRESE also offers position for students pursuing their civil service.

Grading criteria for semester/master projects can be found here (according to the section of mechanical engineering). The students conducting a research projects at LRESE have to present their work at the end of the semester. For master theses, this signature sheet must be signed before final submission.

Available projects (detailed project descriptions available on demand)

– Modeling and Characterization of the Natural-Convection Oil-Based Insulation for Medium Frequency Transformers

– Modeling and optimizing of the air flow and the heat transfer in a robust and affordable infant incubator

– Development of a setup for ethanol quantification under CO2 electrochemical reduction at electrode/solid electrolyte interface

– Design, simulation and experimental validation of a high solar flux calorimeter

– Development of a quasi 2D multi-physical transport model of a PEC device made of a morphologically complex photoelectrode

– Process simulation of a concentrated solar hydrogen, heat and power production facility for optimal demand matching

– Modeling light absorption, electron-transfer kinetics and species transport in particle based photocatalytic reactor for water splitting

– Optimization of hydrophilic/phobic zones in fuel cell gas diffusion layers for enhanced evaporative cooling

– Design and optimization of volume of fluid simulations in newly designed porous media for fuel cells

– Numerical characterization of transport properties for artificially generated 3D macro-porous ceria in solar-assisted water splitting application

– Development of a catalytic hydrogen stove

– Environmental, social and health impact of hydrogen as cooking fuel in the Global South (project in collaboration with HOBEL)

– Smart and scalable control scheme for hydrogen production site (project in collaboration with DECODE)

– Modeling of gas-fed test electrolyzers (project in collaboration with LNCE)

– Degradation investigation in photoelectrochemical devices for hydrogen production

– Uncoupling conduction and radiation heat transfer in high-temperature porous media

– Fabrication of micro-patterned water-splitting photoelectrodes and their experimental characterization

– Design of optical flux homogenizer for a parabolic dish based concentrated PV system

– Thermal design and behavior of integrated photoelectrochemical devices in a parabolic dish concentrator

– High-flux solar simulator: Testing of an experimental chamber for experiments under controlled conditions

– Radiative transfer in nano-structure media for solar energy conversion applications (project description)

– Modeling, designing, and optimizing devices performing artificial photosynthesis

Teaching

Advanced Heat Transfer (master course) offered in the spring semester. Course information and material can be found on moodle.epfl.ch.

Solar Energy Conversion (master course) offered in the fall semester. Course information and material can be found on moodle.epfl.ch.

Renewable Energy (master course) offered in the spring semester. Course information and material can be found on moodle.epfl.ch.

Thermodynamics 1 (bachelor course) offered in the fall semester. Course information and material can be found on moodle.epfl.ch.

Techniques de Mesure (bachelor course) offered in the spring semester. Course information and material can be found on wiki.epfl.ch/me301-tdm.

Energy Systems: From Physics to Systems (doctoral school) offered in the spring semester break. Course information and material can be found on eurotech.epfl.ch.