Parantapa Sawant was born in 1987 in Sangli, India.
He finished his B.E. in mechanical engineering in 2009 at the University of Pune in India. During the course of his studies he gained multiple experiences through two industrial internship semesters and social work at a village school in India. It was through these experiences he got fascinated about the fact that knowledge about energy technologies and renewable energies could help contribute significantly for securing a sustainable future for humanity.
His search for higher education in these branches brought him to Germany, a country with highly developed energy research and a sense of great environmental responsibility. Here he pursued an international Master's degree program in "Energy Conversion and Management" at the Offenburg University of Applied Sciences from 2009 till 2011. During his Master's thesis titled „Numerical Model for the Power Block of a Parabolic Trough Concentrating Solar Power Plant" at DLR Stuttgart, he developed his knowledge in the field of energy system analysis. After graduation he was working as a Project-Engineer on leasing at BASF AG in Ludwigshafen for mechanical and process engineering tasks in plant planning and operations.
Following his motto "Alternatives are the only Alternative"; it is his career goal to work as a competent Energy Systems Researcher or Developer. Hence, he is currently pursuing his PhD, within the framework of a co-operative graduate school between HS Offenburg and University of Freiburg based on "Decentralised and Sustainable Energy Systems". The dissertation is supervised by Prof. Dr. Leonhard Reindl from the Technical Faculty of Freiburg and the research project at the Institute for Energy System Technologies in Offenburg is supervised by Prof. Dr.-Ing Jens Pfafferott.
„Predictive Control of Microscale Trigeneration Systems in Smart Buildings to Enhance the Integration of Renewable Energies"
Trigeneration systems or combined cooling, heating and power (CCHP) systems are a technological extension of combined heat and power (CHP) or cogeneration systems. Here the waste heat of the cogeneration process is used to produce cooling, usually in thermally activated chillers. Due to the fact that an energy cascade is developed and a single fuel source is utilised for multiple energy conversions the exergy efficiency of trigeneration systems is higher than individual conversion units. The thermal chillers in trigeneration systems have a low carbon footprint, modularity for scaling, less maintenance and operate using only water as refrigerant.
This technology is classified as per the different prime movers, thermal chillers, sizes and operation strategies being deployed. Although absorption based small and medium scale systems have been deployed more dominantly, microscale adsorption cooled trigeneration systems (µCCHP) have shown increasing potential in the past decade. This is due to their capability to work with low temperature waste heat which increases their integration potential with other renewable sources and their deployment in terms of grid flexibility and demand side management for smaller buildings having less cooling load.
Even though trigeneration systems are extremely energy efficient and can play a vital role in the building energy sector there deployment is hindered by various barriers. Initial literature research has pointed out the need for a multiperspective (Technological, Energy-Economic and User) analysis in a real life laboratory environment. To this effect an investigation is proposed wherein an analytical model of a microscale trigeneration system integrated with thermo-active building systems (TABS) will be developed and compared with a real life test-rig corresponding to building management systems. The aim of this investigation is to develop a novel model predictive control (MPC) algorithm for optimising the operational capability of microscale trigeneration systems considering the different perspectives and thereby improving their overall energy-economic efficiency.
This engineering dissertation is focussed on the field of energy system technologies and includes inter-disciplinary aspects of process and control engineering, renewable energy integration, storage management and smart buildings. The scientific methods are both theoretical (60%) and experimental (40%) since a mathematical model for the system will be developed and run parallel to a real life test-rig. During the project collaborations are planned with Karlsruhe Institute of Technology, HS Karlsruhe and Fraunhofer ISE in Freiburg.
