Martin van Sint Annaland

This PhD project at Eindhoven University of Technology focuses on intensifying CO₂ capture and conversion processes so they can operate effectively with intermittent renewable electricity. The work sits within CO2URAGE , a broader collaboration aimed at developing electrified, intensified processes to produce syngas, methane, or methanol from CO₂ sourced from air, biomass, or other circular streams. The student will investigate electrically heated, structured packed-bed reactors for direct air capture and integrated CO₂ conversion. A central theme is dynamic operation: maintaining efficient capture, sorbent regeneration, and heat recovery while power availability fluctuates. The project explores how compact reactor designs, low pressure drop, rapid heating and cooling, and effective heat recovery can improve energy efficiency in carbon capture and release. Research activities combine reactor modeling and laboratory experiments . The PhD researcher will design and test 3D-printed reactor structures , study resistive or inductive heating concepts, and examine how these approaches influence local heat supply and overall process performance. The project also extends to the integration of sorbent regeneration with CO₂ hydrogenation to methane or syngas through proof-of-concept experiments and modeling. The work is embedded in the Department of Chemical Engineering and Chemistry at TU/e and connects with program activities in process control, system integration, and techno-economic and environmental assessment. The student will collaborate with researchers at the University of Twente and Delft University of Technology , as well as industrial partners, in an interdisciplinary and internationally connected research environment. The project is supervised by Prof. Martin van Sint Annaland .