Christophe Duwig

Affiliations

Department of Chemical Engineering

KTH Strategic Initiatives (Coordinator for KTH Nuclear Next and KTH Battery Initiative, 2024 - )

KTH Climate Action Centre

KTH Energy Platform (vice-director: 2019-2024)

Research Key Words

Clean Air - Clean Energy - Carbon Capture and Sequestration (CCS) - Renewable Heat - Decarbonization of Industry - Negative Emissions - Circular Production and Recycling

Who am I?

I am an innovative scientist who can analyze and understand problems rapidly opening avenues for developing smart and sometime unconventional solutions. I held several positions in industrial R&D, giving me a deep understanding of the present challenges for the industry and how state-of-the-art research can provide solutions.

I am a dynamic person with strong drift to make things happen. I also enjoy combining competences/ initiating international collaborations and communicating with various audiences.

I understand the importance of clean energy in decarbonizing industry and enabling carbon dioxide removal.

What do I beleive?

I believe in solving global challenges with knowledge, understanding and digital tools. My research contributes, in priority, to several sustainable development goals, namely "Clean affordable energy", "Climate Action", "Sustainable cities" and "Good Health and Well-Being". The concept of clean and precious energy is central to my research.

Societal Challenge?

I am co-coordinating the KTH Energy Initiatives (Nuclear Next and Battery Value Chain) and I am active in Climate Action Centre where I lead the work group on Negative CO2 Emissions. Our mission is to coordinate and support multidisciplinary research initiatives answering to SDG #7 (Clean Affordable Energy) and SDG #13 (Climate Action) in particular as well as other SDGs.

Together with Lina Bertling Tjernberg and Francesco Fuso-Nerini, we believe that knowledge is the key to sustainable energy and we strive to bring together KTH-researchers for inventing a bright future.

I am also the coordinator of C3Air® - the competence centre for Clean Air. It is a network driven by scientists, engineers and citizens who believe that knowledge and collaboration will enable clean and healthy air for everybody by the year 2040. C3Air® intends to break down all existing silos, create a clear road from research to innovation and define a plan for impact with strong citizen engagement. We will focus on selected high-impact air pollution and airborne contamination problems in modern cities and public spaces.

C3Air®is collaboration between KTH, Royal Institute of Technology, Stockholm University and IVL, the swedish environmental institute.

Christophe Duwig and Klas Engvall in Stockholm, December 2019. We need cleaner air! Photo taken by Håkan Lindgren.

My research

At KTH, I am leading a research group focusing on process simulation including fluid mechanics, thermodynamics, heat-transfer & reacting flows/ combustion and I am always interested to start new collaborations and contribute with my expertise.

More specifically, my work focuses on researching knowledge to enable clean waste-heat-recovery, carbon capture processes, renewable heat, energy efficient processes and clean air technologies. The fundamental aspects enabling these applications are heat-transfer studies, reacting flow simulations and multiphase flow investigations (including phase change). My expertise lies in high fidelity simulations of these phenomena combining fluid mechanics & turbulence with chemical reactions, crystalization and complex thermodynamics. I am also pioneering the development and use of advanced post-processing methods (clustering, machine learning, modal analysis) to unravel the complex physics of turbulent thermal flows and provide scientists with powerful enablers.

Fields of interest:

Process Technologies, Fluid Mechanics, Heat-transfer & Reacting flows:
- Simulations of fluid processes using CFD incl. Large Eddy Simulation of reacting and multi-phase flows

- Simulation of processes and reactors for energy efficient Carbon Capture and Metal recovery

- Simulation of exhaust gas cleaning processes, aerosol, nucleation, chemical reactions and phase change
- Analysis of turbulent flows with complex thermodynamics using Proper Orthogonal Decomposition, t-sne, machine learning
- Turbulent heat-transfer and combustion simulations, control & enhancement

General fields:
- Accelerated product development using virtual design: automated simulations, multi-objective optimization

- Application to Virtual Reality and Digitalisation in engineering
- Project management for research and development projects
- Writing successful project applications (Hz2020, Swedish Research Council, Swedish Innovation agency)
- Supervision of junior engineers, PhD- and MSc-students

Engineering & innovative solutions with application to:

- Exhaust gas cleaning using catalysts & cold plasma
- Waste-heat-recovery/ renewable heat

- Heat-Transfer in structures porous media

- Particle spreading and bacterial contamination
- Hydrogen and e-fuel burner simulation