The Disputation will be live streamed for everyone else.
The livestream will be activated 15 minutes before the Defense starts.
Trial lecture
October 15, 10:15 Auditorium 4, Life Science Building
Trial lecture title: “Rare Earth Elements: Mining, Strategic Challenges, and the Light-Heavy Issue”
Conferral summary / Kreeringssammendrag
Denne avhandlingen utforsker nye og mindre kritiske magnetiske materialer som kan gjøre produksjon av flytende hydrogen mer energieffektiv. Nye materialer ble oppdaget ved bruk av maskinlæring og eksperimentelle metoder, og avanserte karakteriseringsteknikker ble brukt til å undersøke strukturelle og magnetiske egenskaper. Funnene gir økt innsikt i materialegenskapene som kan brukes til videre utvikling av magnetokaloriske materialer.
Main research findings / Hovedfunn
Given the pressing issue of climate change, there is a need to transition to more sustainable and lower-emission technologies. Hydrogen is a renewable energy carrier, but suffers from low volumetric energy density, which makes it challenging to store and transport. Cooling hydrogen from gas to liquid greatly reduces its volume, but current liquefaction technologies are highly energy-intensive and expensive as one approach the liquefaction point of hydrogen (20 K or -253 °C). Magnetic cooling utilizes the magnetocaloric effect of magnetic materials and offers a potentially more efficient alternative.
The currently known most efficient magnetocaloric materials rely on expensive and scarce heavy rare-earth elements. Therefore, this work studies the effects of substituting these with light rare-earth elements. Machine learning models trained on compounds reported in the literature were successfully used to screen light rare-earth based compounds. Promising candidates were experimentally synthesized and characterized to examine their magnetocaloric effect. Furthermore, advanced characterization techniques including neutron scattering and synchrotron-based techniques were used to understand the materials and how to optimize them for magnetic refrigeration applications.
Candidate contact information
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/vilde-gahr-sturtzel-lunde-40057a197
ResearchGate: https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Vilde-Gahr-Sturtzel-Lunde?ev=hdr_xprf
Email: vglunde@uio.no / vilde.lunde@ife.no
Telephone: +47 45453360
Adjudication committee
Junior Professor Luana Caron
Joint Lab Bielefeld-Berlin, Universität Bielefeld, Germany
Professor Mogens Christensen
Department of Materials and Production, Aalborg University, Denmark
Associate professor Hanne Røberg-Larsen
Department of Chemistry, University of Oslo
Chair of defence
Professor Mats Tilset
Department of Chemistry, University of Oslo, Norway
Supervisors
Chief scientist Bjørn C. Hauback
Institute for Energy Technology, Kjeller, Norway
Dr. Christoph Frommen
Institute for Energy Technology, Kjeller, Norway
Professor Anja Olafsen Sjåstad
Department of Chemistry, University of Oslo, Norway