Doctoral theses

The importance of air quality cannot be underestimated as it represents a major public health issue: today, nearly 91% of the global population is exposed to air pollution levels exceeding the exposure thresholds set by the WHO. This thesis lies at the intersection of three scientific domains: numerical modeling, air quality, and deep learning.

The employment of high fidelity simulators in industrial application still remain nowadays limited by their computational cost, in particular for the optimization of structure design and reliability assessment. To overcome this situation, several reduced order modeling (ROM) techniques have been developed.

Through various research programs, IFP Energies nouvelles is now strongly involved in the development of bioprocesses to produce biofuels and bio-based chemical intermediates. 

Increasing our scientific and technical knowledge is a vital lever for improving energy systems and reducing our environmental footprint. With this in mind, we propose to develop a technique for simultaneously characterizing the thickness of a liquid film, the flow velocity field within it and that in the surrounding air.

Influence of Coupled Phenomena on Wall Heat Flux in an H2/Air Mixture for Decarbonized Mobility

This thesis is part of the field of the evolution of thermal management of electric propulsion chains, a key element for improving the performance of electric vehicles in terms of power density. Automobile manufacturers are moving towards the use of a “single fluid” for managing the cooling and lubrication of the propulsion chain.

Plastic recycling is a major challenge to combat environmental impact of human activity. IFPEn provides industrial solutions for ecological transition, devising and designing new processes such as plastic chemical recycling process.

In a context of a technological shift towards electric mobility, the main current technological solution is the lithium-ion battery. However, state of the art lithium-ion batteries still lack a sufficient energy density to compete with the internal combustion engine on autonomy.

Understanding and forecasting climate variability is a major scientific challenge, particularly in Africa, which has been recognized by the IPCC as one of the most vulnerable continents to climate change. Of key interest is how temperatures, rainfall, fire activity and soil erosion will evolve with increasing greenhouse gas concentrations.

Proton Exchange Membrane Fuel Cells (PEMFC) are one of the preferred technologies for decarbonizing the transport sector, due to their autonomy and ease of recharging. However, their large-scale democratization is hampered by their high cost, which is compounded by their unsatisfactory durability. 

Moving toward less carbonated transportation is a challenge for the society that relies on the electrification of the vehicle fleet, for which batteries performance needs to be better mastered and optimized.

Bubble columns are commonly used in industry for bioprocesses, toluene hydrogenation for hydrogen transport or oligomerization of bio-ethylene... However, predicting the bubble size distribution in a bubble column under specifics operating conditions remains a major challenge for the scientific community.