Nedunchezhian Swaminathan
University of Cambridge
Presenting in Track 10: Fluids Engineering
Presentation Title: Decarbonizing the Energy: Challenges and Opportunities for Fluids Engineering
Abstract: The carbon is deep rooted in our energy ecosystems in general and specifically it is the source for current primary energy supply across all sectors. Alternative sources are being explored to address and mitigate the environmental issues such as climate change arising from the use of carbon energy. This exploration is likely to accelerate further because of the COP28 agreement to "transition away from fossil fuels", and time will tell whether this is conceivable or not. Renewables are catching on for electricity production, but it is impractical for sectors such as transport requiring high power density. These sectors are exploring the use of hydrogen, ammonia, biofuels, and electric propulsion. Each of these brings their own challenges and scientific opportunities for further developing the required technologies. This talk is aimed to give a broad overview on the future directions and to discuss the associated major scientific and technological challenges and opportunities, specifically on the fluids science and engineering side. The role of high-performance computing in the envisaged scientific journey will be highlighted.
Biography: N. Swaminathan is a Professor of Mechanical Engineering at Cambridge University, Cambridge, UK. His research interests span from turbulence in engineering flows to geophysical flows, including combustion physics and chemistry, turbulence-flame interaction, sound-flame interaction, pollutants formation, emissions, and their interactions with the environment. He is a Fellow of The Combustion Institute, Cambridge Philosophical Society, and the Chair of British Section of the Combustion Institute. He serves on the Editorial board of many journals on fluids and combustion areas. He is member of steering committee for Physics in the Spotlight of Institute of Physics, He works closely with industries such as Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, Rolls-Royce, Siemens and consults to many industries in energy sector. He has published more than 200 articles in journals and conference proceedings, and has co-edited 2 books on Turbulent Combustion, published by Cambridge University Press (2011, 2021), another book on Machine Learning Applied to Combustion published by Springer (2023).