Michael Golombok

Mike Golombok is a part-time professor in the Power and Flow group in the department of mech. eng. at TU/e.  He is seconded from Shell to develop projects in renewable energy storage and applications. Previously he has worked on carbon capture by CO2 removal from gas streams by centrifugal phase separation, pipeline acoustics, water flow in geothermal reservoirs and concept engineering of the Dogger Bank Wind Energy Hub. He teaches the MSc course ‘Energy Geoscience’ covering topics relevant to CCS (carbon capture and storage), hydrogen storage, geothermal engineering and subsurface flow. 

Mike's current research activities are:

• Dense energy carriers: iron powder is being developed in a circular process to provide heat for the process industry when renewables are offline ("intermittency" = wind not blowing or sun not shining). The energy density is much higher than fossil fuels, batteries and hydrogen. 
• DC electric vehicle charging: A car battery does not provide the same range as a tank of gasoline. Charging takes much longer than filling a tank with petrol: high power charges are needed but the current grid is not up to it. Mike is developing novel partial power processors coupled to retail site battery energy storage systems.
• CO2 electrolytic conversion to ethylene. Mike is collaborating with colleagues in chemistry and mech. eng to develop : novel ways to contact CO2 and water on an electrode; increase the scale of electrode and augment ethylene product bubble detachment. 

Michael Golombok received his BSc from University of Glasgow and a PhD from University of Toronto. He has worked for Shell since 1985 and has been seconded as a prof to TU/e since 2006. At Shell he is a principal researcher in the new energies R&D department. His interests include rowing (sculls), fitness and playing the viola in an orchestra.