Speakers
Professor Christos N. Markides, Imperial College London, UK
Christos Markides is Professor of Clean Energy Technologies, Head of the Clean Energy Processes Laboratory, and leads the Experimental Multiphase Flow Laboratory, which is the largest experimental space of its kind at Imperial College London. He is also, amongst other, Editor-in-Chief of journal Applied Thermal Engineering, and a member of the UK National Heat Transfer Committee. He specialises in applied thermodynamics, fluid flow, heat and mass transfer processes as applied to high-performance devices, technologies and systems for thermal-energy recovery, utilization, conversion or storage. His research interests include heating/cooling provision and power generation, and in particular, solar energy and waste heat recovery and conversion in diverse applications. He has published >350 journal and >400 conference papers on these topics. He has won multiple awards, including IChemE’s Global Award for “Best Research Project” for his work on hybrid PV-thermal technologies (2018). He also won IMechE’s Donald Julius Groen outstanding paper prize (2016), the Engineers’ Without Borders “Chill Challenge” (2020), as well as Imperial College London President’s Awards for Teaching (2016) and for Research Excellence (2017). His papers are regularly selected for covers or as most cited/downloaded papers in journals, including a Featured Paper in Light, Science & Applications (2021), and Front-Cover Paper in Nano Materials Science (2021). Apart from his position at Imperial, he is also Founder and Director of Imperial spin-out company Solar Flow (see: http://www.solar-flow.co.uk), which is focusing on a high-performance PV-X technology.
Speech Title: New fronters in solar polygeneragion via hybrid PV-X technologies
Abstract: By 2050, solar technologies are projected to deliver the majority of the world’s electricity as part of an energy transition that is already well underway. Although solar energy can be used to provide either heat or electrical power, conventional options are designed for only one of these purposes. In particular, photovoltaic (PV) panels are typically less than 20% efficient in delivering electricity from the sun’s energy with the remainder lost to the environment as waste heat. At the same time, it is well known that PV panels experience a deterioration in performance (efficiency) when they are operated at higher temperatures, and that this leads to high losses especially when the solar resource is at its highest. A drop in efficiency of up to 20% can be expected when PV cells reach operating temperatures of ~60-70 °C, which is easily experienced in hot climates. This loss has motivated the development of ‘hybrid’ PV-thermal (PV-T) solar collector technology, which combines PV modules with a contacting fluid (gas or liquid) flow in various geometries and configurations. The fluid is used to recover some of the waste heat from the cells, thus delivering a potentially useful thermal output from the collector, while simultaneously cooling the PV cells, thus increasing their electrical efficiency. PV-T collectors offer advantages when space is at a premium and there is demand for both heat and power, and have been shown to be a highly efficient technology capable of achieving system efficiencies (electrical plus thermal) of up to 60-70%. By far the most common use of the thermal-energy output from existing PV-T systems is to provide hot water at 50-60 °C for households or low-temperature commercial use. However, a wide range of opportunities arise at higher temperatures, if the heat can be used to drive power-generation cycles (e.g., with organic Rankine cycles, thermoelectric generators, amongst other), thermally-driven heating or cooling (e.g., with desiccant, ad/absorption cycles) or even desalination and fuel production processes, which are viable typically above ~80 °C and become increasingly efficient at progressively higher temperatures. There is an incentive to explore these polygeneration options. In standard PV-T collector designs, however, the electrical and thermal outputs are traded-off each other, since any effort to collect additional thermal energy or to increase the temperature of that energy leads to an electrical loss. This has led recently to the proposal of next-generation hybrid collector designs that can generate high-temperature heat, while not sacrificing the electricity output. In this talk, we will present conventional and advanced hybrid PV-T collector designs along with their underpinning operational principles, discuss the challenges and opportunities of further developing this technology, and of integrating it within wider solar-energy systems capable of the affordable provision of cooling, heating and power. We will also propose a new concept that we refer to as ‘PV-X’ solar collectors, which harnesses additional performance benefits when these secondary processes are integrated synergistically with the PV cells and performed directly within the collector.
Professor Omid Mahian, Ningbo University, China
Omid Mahian is a full Professor (National Young Talents) and doctoral supervisor at Ningbo University. He is also a visiting professor in the Department of Chemical Engineering at Imperial College London. Currently, he serves as a member of the Editorial Board for Energy (Elsevier), Renewable Energy (Elsevier), Journal of Thermal Science (Springer), Senior Associate Editor of Journal of Thermal Analysis and Calorimetry (Springer), Associate Editor of Solar Energy Engineering Journal (ASME), Advisory Board Member of Hybrid Advances (Elsevier), Academic Editor of Plos One and Advisory Board Member of Heliyon (Cell Press). Omid Mahian has contributed as a reviewer for over 100 international journals. His research primarily focuses on the application of nanotechnology in renewable energy, including the use of nanofluids in solar collectors and solar desalination. He also specializes in entropy generation and exergy analysis in energy systems. He has an extensive publication record, with over 200 SCI papers. His work has been featured in top journals such as Joule, Progress in Energy and Combustion Science, Physics Reports, and Nano Energy. Omid Mahian has been recognized as a highly cited researcher for three consecutive years (2018, 2019, and 2020) by the Web of Science. Furthermore, he has received several international awards from conferences and innovation exhibitions in recognition of his contributions to the field of heat transfer and renewable energy.
Associate Professor Qinlong Ren, Xi'an Jiaotong University, China
Qinlong Ren, Associate Professor, Xi'an Jiaotong University, China. He received the Ph. D degree from The University of Arizona, U.S. at 2016 for Mechanical Engineering. His research interests include multiscale heat and mass transfer, renewable energy conversion, energy storage, and electrokinetic phenomena. He has published 44 SCI Journal papers, including 28 papers as first or corresponding author with citations of 1682 at Google scholar. He has received research grants from NSF of China and several industrial companies.
Associate Professor Pengfei Wang, Xi'an Jiaotong University, China
Pengfei Wang received a Ph.D. degree in Nuclear Science and Technology in 2016 from the Xi'an Jiaotong University. He is currently an associate professor at the School of Energy and Power Engineering of the Xi'an Jiaotong University. He was a visiting scholar at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 2015 and 2016. He was a Scientific Committee Member of the 8th World Congress on Momentum, Heat and Mass Transfer (MHMT 2023). His research interests include the dynamic modeling, simulation, and control of renewable energy systems, intelligent fault diagnosis and autonomous control of nuclear power plants, structure optimization and cooperative control of nuclear-renewable hybrid energy systems. He has published more than 30 SCI Journal papers, including more than 20 papers as first or corresponding author. He has received research grants from NSF and NKRDP of China and several industrial companies.
Professor Lin Qiu, University of Science and Technology Beijing, China
Lin Qiu is Professor of Thermal Science & Energy Engineering at University of Science and Technology Beijing. Her research focuses on understanding the micro- and nano-scale heat transfer. In particular, nano-carbon structures and their interfaces that mainly involve heat dissipation (e.g., carbon nanotube arrays, carbon nanotube/carbon fibers, graphene nanoplates and graphene-diamond interfaces, etc). Her group concentrates on challenging characterization of novel nanoscale materials with excellent thermal transport properties (e.g. Harmonic wave technology, Raman spectroscopy, Scanning thermal microscopy, etc). She also performs theoretical mechanism studies on the phonon transmission in nano-carbon materials using molecular dynamics simulation. She also explores possible applications, in collaboration with industrial partners, including nano-thermal interfacial materials, conformal flexible thermosensors, blood flow mapping sensors, thermophysical property measurement instrument, etc. She has co-authored more than 90 publications in international journals, and counts with more than 2,900 citations to her work, and selected into the talent program of "Excellent Youth Scholar of NSFC" and "Beijing Nova Program".
Speech Title: Skin thermal diagnosis technology based on harmonic-wave method
Abstract: The current medical status is not optimistic, the overall population aging, disease trend of young, the population sub-health state is common, so health monitoring in daily life is particularly important. In the face of such a dilemma, the current medical resources are in short supply, medical treatment is time-consuming and labor-intensive, and it is very difficult to rely on large hospital detection equipment to monitor health status in real time for the detection results are slow. Therefore, intelligent wearable devices need to be developed to enable people to independently monitor their health status in real time and seek medical treatment when changes occur. However, most of the existing smart wearable devices have shortcomings such as low precision, poor robustness, and few detectable parameters, which limits people's diversified and personalized health status monitoring needs. As the first line of defense of the human body, skin has many functions such as barrier, sensation, regulation, absorption, secretion and excretion. The state of the skin is inextricably linked with individual health. Parameters such as skin thermal conductivity, water content, and blood perfusion rate can more accurately reflect the state of the human body. As an advanced measurement technology, harmonic-wave method has been widely used in the multi-parameter measurement of films, fibers, blocks and other materials. The smart wearable device based on the principle of harmonic-wave method closely combines the measured skin-related indicators with medical parameters, helping us to grasp the health status anytime and anywhere, and seeking medical treatment in time once the indicators change, which has great application value in daily health care. In this speech, the principle of harmonic-wave method and the application of different forms of sensors in monitoring skin surface state and skin delamination thermal conductivity are introduced. Relevant research results have been verified and analyzed by means of population testing, which undoubtedly provides a new idea and method for human skin thermal diagnosis.
The Keynote Speaker will continue to be updated.
