The urgent need for decarbonization has brought about a shift towards hydrogen and hydrogen-enriched 
fuels as a solution for the future cleaner, and low-carbon energy systems. However, meeting the EU targets 
for reduced emissions and carbon dependency poses new challenges for energy-intensive industrial 
processes like steel manufacturing or power generation. Power-to-X (P2X) technologies are being developed 
to produce "green hydrogen" from renewable electricity, which can then be used to improve these processes 
and reduce their carbon footprint and dependence on fossil fuels. In fact, given the still low energy density of 
batteries, green hydrogen is currently the only feasible alternative to decarbonize industries where this 
parameter is critical, such as as commercial aviation. Hydrogen-based technologies are a crucial component 
of the energy transition and require digital tools and advanced software to speed up their deployment in the 
market. 

Green hydrogen, which is generated from water and renewable electricity in an electrolyzer, can be stored 
and distributed for use in power generation or electrochemical systems like fuel cells. Among the most 
efficient hydrogen production systems, Solid Oxide Electrolizer Cells (SOECs) operating at high temperatures 
have shown high potential to generate hydrogen at moderate and large scales. These cutting-edge 
technologies involve numerous physical and chemical phenomena occurring at various scales, ranging from 
thermo-mechanical-fluidic at the cm-scale to electrochemistry at the nanoscale. The multi-physics and 
multi-scale nature of these devices makes them extremely challenging from a simulation standpoint, but the 
outputs of the simulations are highly valuable for predicting and designing real-world operating systems.
 
This postdoc positions offers a chance to work on predicting the electro-thermo-mechanical behavior of 
SOEC technology with a focus on developing a computational framework describing the coupled system. The 
research will involve understanding the electro-chemistry, and thermo-mechanical properties of SOECs and 
developing a model to accurately predict the voltage, degradation, and thermal stresses under service 
conditions for the critical cell components. The developed framework will be integrated into Alya, an HPC-
multiphysics code, coupling it with the fluid solver. The successful candidate will work with a team of 
experienced researchers to further advance the SOECs field and contribute to sustainable energy 
technologies development. The model developed by the candidate will be verified and validated against the 
experimental data gathered from the prototype cells provided by the cutting-edge equipment of project 
partners. The outcome of this project involves the candidate working on developing infrastructure for 
generating Digital Twins that use Artificial Intelligence (AI) and physics-based reduced-order models to 
process data from the full description of the SOEC system. 


Key duties 
•	Developing an electro-chemical solver coupled to the Navier-Stokes equations.
•	Coupling electro-chemistry with a thermo-mechanical model.
•	Predict the overall SOEC performance along with the critical cell components.
•	Interact with the different partners of the projects to carry our collaborative research.
•	Contribute to scientific publications and reporting to different National and EU projects the researcher 
will be involved in.