The goal of the project was to obtain a better understanding of the hydrodynamics and heat- and mass-transfer limitations, and the role of turbulence in large scale slurry bubble columns using state-of-the-art computer simulations. The slurry bubble column reactors are viewed as one of the most promising methods to produce synthetic fuels through the so-called Fischer-Tropsch process. However, their successful design and scale-up require a complete understanding of multiphase fluid dynamics, i.e., phase mixing, and heat and mass transport characteristics. To achieve the goal, I used detailed numerical simulations and concentrating on the development of a high-performance parallel code and new models and approaches to predict phase interactions. During my work, I implemented a completely new OOP-based in-house framework, starting from linear solvers (Krylov, AMG) to the discretization of PDEs in FiniteVolume formulation. The whole code is parallelized using OpenMP and MPI programming models and has low-level optimizations of the main parts. The framework has excellent parallel efficiency and demonstrates linear scaling up to a few thousand tested cores on a problem with 125M DoF.

I have worked as an engineer researching complex flow patterns in water turbines (Francis and Kaplan) using experimental and numerical approaches. I was responsible for organizing and overseeing experiments as well as defining metrics and measuring outcomes. I gained substantial experience with different types of probes, PLC’s and analysis of experimental data, and have worked extensively in the small research group, communicating effectively with my team. Also, I was involved in the development of in-house code for real-time visualization and signal processing.