Jack Brouwer, Ph.D.
Associate Professor, Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering & Associate Director, Advanced Power And Energy Program, National Fuel Cell Research Center
University of California, Irvine
Speech Title:
Clean, Efficient and Sustainable Energy Conversion for Data Centers
Abstract:
Alternative energy technologies such as fuel cells, solar power, and wind power have the potential to significantly increase energy sustainability for future IT needs such as data centers. Renewable fuels derived from waste streams or produced from energy crops will play an important role since they can be produced continuously as part of the sustainable energy portfolio. The uncontrollability and intermittent availability of wind and solar power require sustainable energy storage and dispatchable power generating technologies, such as fuel cells, to meet the continuous and dynamic demands of IT infrastructure. The current talk will address the dynamics of energy and power systems with particular emphasis upon recent work that UC Irvine has accomplished with Microsoft to investigate sustainable powering of servers and complete data centers with fuel cells. Experimental and theoretical investigation of highly efficient direct DC powering of servers from fuel cells has been demonstrated. Efficiency improvements and emissions reductions have been proven possible with renewable power and fuel cell technology.
Bio:
Brouwer received his Ph.D. in mechanical engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1993. From 1993 to 1997 he served as a research assistant professor at the University of Utah and was a member of the technical staff at Reaction Engineering International. He came to UC Irvine in 1997 as associate director of the National Fuel Cell Research Center (NFCRC), concurrently holding appointments as lecturer, assistant and then associate adjunct professor. He was named assistant professor in the summer of 2011.
Research Interests:
advanced and alternative energy systems development, electrochemical conversion devices and systems, dynamic simulation and control, turbulent reacting flows, chemical kinetics, and electrochemical reactions with concurrent heat, mass and momentum transfer
