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Winner of the Golden Master Award 2020

Winnaar Golden Master Award 2020

Thijs Hazenberg

An Eulerian-Lagrangian approach for simulating heterogeneous combustion of metal fuels, Universiteit Eindhoven

The Golden Master Award Jury has nominated the thesis of Thijs Hazenberg, entitled “An Eulerian-Lagrangian approach for simulating heterogeneous combustion of metal fuels” as winner of the Golden Master Award 2020.

In his thesis Thijs Hazenberg describes in a very clear and well-illustrated way the research that was performed under supervision of dr.ir. J.A. van Oijen in the Power&Flow group of the Department of Mechanical Engineering of Eindhoven University of Technology.

Thijs clearly explained the relevance of his research for the development of a new generation of metal-based, properly working, reliable and high power-density engines for the storage of energy. Metal particles have similar combusting properties as hydrocarbon fuels, but allow to reversible store and deliver clean energy. However, a thorough understanding of metal combustion is required for practical application and this was lacking at the time Thijs started his research.

Thijs has developed a novel modelling method for the combustion of metal fuels and used it to investigate the propagation of combustion fronts in dispersions of fine metal particles in air. His work has given new insight in the structure of such reaction fronts and the physical mechanisms that determine their propagation speed.

The model Thijs has developed stands out from earlier models because of its much more comprehensive physical description with a significantly higher level of detail. Thijs has discovered an unexpected behaviour in the front propagation speed as function of fuel concentration, which he was able to explain by performing a detailed analysis of the underlying physical phenomena. He worked independently and came up with innovative solutions for many unforeseen numerical difficulties.

In his well-structured master thesis, Thijs managed to clearly explain the complex theory underlying the combustion of fine metal particles. Furthermore, he showed himself to be a critical scientist in addressing the various assumptions he made and by providing many suggestions for further improvement.

His work will result a in publication in a high standard journal and has opened the way to several  new areas of research. This is amongst others shown by the NOW-AES granted awarded to the research group, which allows Thijs to continue this novel research direction as a PhD student.

All this has convinced the committee to nominate the thesis as a winner for the Golden Master Award 2020.

The other two prizes were awarded to:

Bram Kappé - Utrecht University
Aminoborane as a cooperative accepting ligand

Errikos Kounalis - Utrecht University
Combining Metal-Metal and Metal-Ligand Cooperativity Using a Naphthyridine-based Proton-responsive PNNP ‘Expanded pincer’