“Multiphase and reactive flows are all around us. To make processes and equipment more sustainable we need to get the fundamentals right.”

Niels Deen is a Full Professor and Chair of the Power & Flow group in the Department of Mechanical Engineering at Eindhoven University of Technology (TU/e). Niels’ expertise is largely in the areas of process technology, multiphase reactors, computational fluid dynamics and experimental fluid dynamics.

His research is concerned with the development of computational and experimental techniques for the study of multiphase reactors. This includes multiphase flow modeling of intensified contacting in bubble column reactors and multiphase processes in fluidized beds. Typical applications of this research include the automotive, food and chemical industries. One especially interesting potential application is metal fuels - metallic powders of order 10 µm - that are combusted/regenerated in a closed cycle and as such present a very attractive recyclable zero-carbon fuel option.

Niels Deen obtained his PhD from Aalborg University, Esbjerg. From 2001 until 2010, he worked as an assistant professor at the University of Twente in The Netherlands. From 2010 until 2015, he worked as an associate professor in the TU/e Multiphase Reactors Group. In 2010, Niels received a Starting Grant from the European Research Council (ERC) to work on micro-structured bubble column reactors. He has collaborated with all the major chemical industries in the Netherlands. Niels is also Executive Editor of Elsevier publication Chemical Engineering Science. From 2009-2018 he co-chaired the contact group on Multiphase Flow of the J.M. Burgerscentrum.

From 2016 he is a full professor and head of the Power and Flow group. Together with Professor Philip de Goey from the same group he has extended his research interests in the direction of metal fuel applications.

• Eindhoven Institute for Sustainable Energy Systems (EIRES)
• J.M. Burgerscentrum (JMBC)
• Dutch Polymer Institute (DPI)
• Netherlands Center for Multiscale Catalytic Energy Conversion (MCEC)
• Advanced Research Center Chemical Building Blocks Consortium (ARC CBBC)

 Partners in (semi-)industry

Nouryon, DSM, Shell, TNO