Prof. Ahmed F Ghoniem

Ronald C Crane (1972) Professor of Mechanical Engineering
Director, Reacting Gas Dynamics Laboratory (RGD)
Director, Center for 21st Century Energy

Primary DLC

Department of Mechanical Engineering

MIT Room: 3-344

Areas of Interest and Expertise

Turbulent Reacting Flow
Computational Fluid Dynamics
Fluid Mechanics and Aerodynamics
Combustion Dynamics and Modeling
Analysis of Numerical Methods
Automotive and Aircraft Engines
Energy Conservation
Environmental Engineering
Heat and Mass Transfer
Smart Grid

Research Summary

Professor Ghoniem’s research interests lie in the areas of high performance computing in turbulent reactive flow, computational mathematics, combustion dynamics and active control, modeling and simulation of transport-chemistry interactions in thermochemical and electrochemical systems including high temperature fuel cells, gasification processes and fuel production and analysis of high-performance, zero-emission integrated energy systems with CO2 capture.

PROFESSIONAL AND ACADEMIC INTERESTS:
(1) Energy Conversion science and engineering, including combustion, thermochemical and electrothermochemical processes, their integration, and interface with renewable energy systems such solar thermal and biofuels
(2) Environmental footprint of energy production including CO2 emission and water consumption
(3) High-performance computing, science discovery through advanced computing, information technology, computational mathematics, and application to turbulence and combustion. CFD: development and application of advanced computational methods in fluid dynamics, transport, mixing and combustion
(4) Carbon-capture research, including gasification and reforming, oxy-combustion, ITM reactor development, Chemical looping combustion. CO2 reduction and reuse
(5) Renewable energy sources and conversion including biomass to liquid via thermochemical pathways, hybrid CSP and solar reforming
(6) Active control of thermo-fluid systems including combustion instability, noise, signature, emissions and performance
(7) Electrothermochemical modeling and simulations of solid oxide fuel cells, direct carbon fuel cells and systems, ITM reactors and oxygen carrier for chemical looping

Recent Work