Fundamentals of Heat Transfer and Thermodynamics
My name is Wilko Rohlfs, I am a full professor of heat transfer and thermodynamics. My research area faces the challenge of providing environmentally friendly and economically reliable technologies for heating and cooling. The electrification of society requires not only technologies for energy storage and heat removal from thermally highly loaded components, for instance, in electrical components in e-mobility, but also new technologies for heating houses or providing industrial heat all year round.
Background
My personal background is in the theory and modelling of heat transfer processes associated with single- and multiphase fluid flow, so called convective heat transfer. My main motivation is to develop, improve and use modelling approaches to understand and predict physical phenomena, often driven by pure curiosity.
However, due to my additional background in economics, I am always eager to use the gained understanding to improve technical processes for contributing to the development of a safe and sustainable society. From an application perspective, my research ranges from mass transfer in the human kidney to frost formation in air coolers to the development of new cooling fluids based on hybrid particles.
In the years to come
Reducing global consumption of fossil fuels without seriously compromising today's standard of living is a tremendous challenge and only possible through technological progress. Improvements in heat removal are necessary for the miniaturisation of electric components. Provision of heat for industry based on renewable resources requires an adaption to the fluctuating energy supply, which in turn allows for a higher share of renewables in the electricity mix. Domestic heating in the dark wintertime is a further problem that needs a solution to achieve the mentioned goal. All of the above-mentioned challenges involve, or are even limited by, heat transfer processes. But not only is the development of new technologies of great meaning for me, I also aim to contribute significantly in knowledge transfer, starting at school up to the doctorate level, through new open-source teaching methods.
Education
Educating new generations of engineers from bachelor to master level is of paramount importance to pave the way to a green society together. Using open-source lectures and a hybrid teaching approach, I aim to teach students the fundamentals of heat transfer (Bachelor course in Module 7) and more fundamental aspects of heat transfer in solid materials (Master course Functional Materials) as clearly as possible so that they can put the knowledge directly into practice. For this, I use a self-developed teaching application named HeatQuiz with specifically designed game engines for STEM education.
Collaborations
Scientific collaborations inside and outside the university are the link to success, and industry partnerships involving companies as well as professional associations are an important pillar for my research. They help not only to understand current needs, but also to bring innovations to market quickly and, in this way, they influence society.