Nicole C. Stevens

Nicole Stevens is a Doctoral Candidate at the Power and Flow group in the Mechanical Engineering Department of Eindhoven University of Technology (TU/e) under supervision of full professor Niels Deen and assistant professor Giulia Finotello. She researches the reduction of iron oxide as part of the metal fuel cycle and the potential of the whole cycle as renewable energy source. 

Nowadays more and more alternative energy sources bevome feasible with less or even no output of greenhouse emissions. One of these alternatives is the metal fuel iron. Iron powder is a good energy carrier which can be stored and transported in large amounts. Energy is released by burning the iron powder, this results in a product of iron oxides. These iron oxides can be recycled using green hydrogen, this is called reduction. The combination of these two steps, combustion and reduction, creates a carbon free cycle.

Despite the fact that metal fuels seems to be a very promosing alternative, it still has a lot of challenges. To solve these challenges more research is required on the combustion as well as the reduction part, and the cycle as a whole. In Stevens' research the reduction part is further investigated using numerical simulations and lab-scale experiments. The results of these experiments will be used to investigate the efficiency and potential of the metal fuel cycle.