My strong interest and motivation to work on waste treatment technologies and energy systems optimization first sparked during an exchange year in Brazil (São Paulo), and I started the Master in Energy Science and Technology when I came back in 2019. After a semester project on alternative pathways for steel production at IPESE (Spring 2021), I had the opportunity to do an industrial Master Thesis at Hitachi Zosen Inova AG (HZI, Zürich), working on industrial integration of CO2 mineralization to municipal waste incineration and collaborating with the US company Carbonfree (formerly SkyCycle).
Since October 2022, I am an industrial PhD candidate working at HZI as a Process Engineer in the R&D department for Renewable Gas. In my free time, I enjoy rowing in a club that has now become my second (or.. third?) family, Belvoir Ruderclub. I value greatly the time I get to spend with my loved ones, and try to be out in the nature as much as possible.
My research
Municipal solid waste management is a societal and multi-facet challenge, both on local and global scales. Estimations for the horizon 2050 predict significant waste generation increase in every world region, and important discrepancies remain between net-zero decarbonization targets of the Paris Agreement and current waste treatment technologies’ environmental performance. This creates an important area of research and development to improve the solutions, especially with regards to transitioning energy supply systems and circular economy goals for material recovery. Waste treatment offers a range of products, involving various technical domains, possibly conflicting performance criteria, system interaction potential and uncertain markets (both for short and long-term aspects). Consequently, decision-making around the determination of the optimal system design and operational strategy is complex, and requires systematic decision support tools to provide key performance indicators comparing solutions in a holistic and comprehensive manner.
The objective of this doctoral research is to develop a simulation and optimization platform to support the design selection and operational strategy analysis of integrated Waste-to-X systems, investigating economically viable, technically feasible and environmentally safe (locally and globally) decarbonization technologies to net zero global warming potential solutions. In that regard, the modeling environment developed will display all features necessary for reliable techno-economic analysis of dynamic multi-energy systems with modular level of modeling details and uncertain input parameters. The platform will enable a large range of assessment scope flexibility, considering environmental and economic indicators in a systematic and transparent manner, providing selected relevant metrics to stakeholders. Optimal control strategies and configuration design including long-term energy storage capabilities will enable the investigation on short to long-term variability in the processes (e.g. kinetics, equipment degradation) and systems (e.g. storage potential) operations.
The results of this work will support the exploration of novel waste treatment process integration and system operations in a flexible range of regulatory, economic and environmental contexts. Systemic innovation will be fostered, and robust solutions provided for the long-term planning of waste management, particularly relevant in the current energy transition.
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