About me
I was born in 1989 in Barcelona, Catalonia, and grew up in Cerdanyola del Vallès, a town right next to the Catalan capital. Since I was a child, I was always interested in how things worked. Physics and computers where my favorite courses. My first contact with hydrogen was at high-school: all Catalan kids are supposed to do some “research” on their own to graduate, and I choose to work on hydrogen and build a little electrolyzer myself. There I saw some little bubbles attaching to the electrodes, so I guess it is fair to say that I have been passionate about this topic most of my adult life.
In 2007 I enrolled into a 5-year B.Sc. program in Mechanical Engineering at Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya (UPC). There I came in contact for the first time with numerical methods for Partial Differntial Equations (PDEs), mostly in the context of fluid flow, heat and mass transfer problems. In 2012, upon graduation, I was awarded a Balsells fellowship to pursue a MSc. in Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering at the University of California, Irvine where I worked with professor Jack Brouwer on solid oxide fuel cells. In 2014 I returned to Catalonia and started working at TermoFluids, a spin-off company from UPC focused on the development of thermal equipment. I worked on different projects, ranging from solar collectors to compressors for fridges, but mostly on absorption chillers. In 2017 I enrolled in a PhD program in Mechanical Engineering at UPC, where I developed new methods for the Direct Numerical Simulation of multi-phase flows, which I defended in January 2021.
In 2021 I was a postdoc at the Computational and Numerical Mathematics Group at the University of Groningen. Together with professor Roel Verstappen, my research was focused on the development of numerical methods for bubble-induced turbulence and bubble detachment dynamics. In 2022 I moved to the Process & Energy department at Delft University of Technology for a second post-doc, where I worked on the design of new electrodes for the optimization of water electrolysis with Professor Willem Haverkort.
My current appointment is as an Assistant Professor at TU Delft’s Faculty of Mechanical Engineering. My research is focused on the optimization of the flow, heat, and mass transfer phenomena in electrochemical systems.
When I am not working, I enjoy family, football (FC Barcelona fan here) and cooking. I also like to spend my holidays hiking in the Pyrenees.
Contact
Technische Universiteit Delft
Process & Energy Laboratory
Leeghwaterstraat 39
2628 CB Delft
The Netherlands
+31 (0) 152 78 67 34
n.vallemarchante [at] tudelft [dot] nl