This October I was very pleased to welcome my first PhD student who will be working with me on a topic closely related to my Royal Academy of Engineering Research Fellowship. To mark this occasion, here is a guest entry from Mr Pawel Ogrodniczak reflecting on his journey so far and giving an insight into what his research will seek to investigate!

Starting Mechanical Engineering course at City, University of London in 2016, I did not expect I would end up undertaking a PhD degree a few years after. Nonetheless, this is where I am today, however, the decision to pursue further studies did not come to me immediately…

It has all started with a particular interest in energy-related concepts. In my first year I had an opportunity to learn thermodynamics – a module that I particularly enjoyed. I discovered the ways that energy is transferred from one form to another in a fashion that serves the purpose of generating useful energy for human needs. Unfortunately, I also discovered the ‘dark’ side of the energy sector. Even though we have methods to reliably generate electricity and mechanical power, these methods often rely on burning fossil fuels, which is associated with emission of great amounts of CO2, and other nasty stuff that contributes to the global climate change and air pollution problems. I thought to myself it would be nice to combine my interest and engineering knowledge to somehow contribute to the development systems that utilise so-called ‘clean’ energy.

The first chance to learn more about this topic was during the final year of my Bachelor’s degree. Among various topics available for the final year project, I picked one that focused on the application of Organic Rankine Cycles (ORC) for extracting heat from the ocean and turning it into useful energy. This topic was related to renewable energy methods, which fit perfectly into the realm of my interest. Before I completed my dissertation, one question had been in my mind – if there exist methods to generate electricity that are not harmful to the environment why do we still use fossil fuels? Thanks to the final year project, I soon understood what obstacles there are to overcome to replace harmful electricity generation ways with ones that are environmental-friendly. Picking up the fundamentals of ORC, and understanding the challenges associated with wider implementation of these systems gave me a good starting point in the research within this area.

As soon as I finished my Bachelor’s degree, I received an email with offers of summer placements at City. One of the placements was related to the design of a seeding generator for an ORC testing facility. With the prior experience gained during my final year project, I thought it couldn’t be any better to work on something related to ORC systems to further develop my knowledge and skills before proceeding to the MEng degree. This way I met Dr Martin White, who supervised my ‘ideal’ summer internship at City for about eight weeks. This was a great time for me as I could taste what it’s like to work as a researcher, gaining useful experience. After several weeks of good work, I really enjoyed the type of activities that I carried out, and I was much more convinced that directing my career path towards academia would be a good choice. As turned out later on, my relationship with Martin was not to end yet…

A few months after, I met Martin again, expressing my interest in undertaking PhD study. With my well-defined area of interest and Martin’s experience, we quickly found a research topic that I could work on. Thank God, the proposed research topic was found worth investigation by the City University committee, and I was enrolled onto MPhill/PhD in Mechanical Engineering.

Now, what am I actually going to work on? For the next three years, with the supervision and aid of Martin, I will do my best to design a turboexpander that can expand two-phase flows of organic fluids. Simply speaking, I am planning to design a machine that can draw a pressurised organic liquid-vapour mixture, release pure low-pressure vapour, and produce mechanical energy in that process. Is it really needed, or it is the art for art’s sake? As proven by other researchers, expanding working fluids in ORC systems from two-phase conditions can lead to significant power output increase, however, lack of suitable two-phase expanders makes this option less viable. For the next couple of years, I will be working in the Thermo-Fluids Research Centre at City as a part of the turbomachinery group. I am sure there is a great time a head of me!

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