Azahara Luna Triguero

As a kid she wanted to be an astronaut, exploring the greatest of objects and the largest of distances. But during her studies, she got hooked on the smallest of things instead. Now Azahara Luna Triguero is an Assistant Professor in the Energy Technology group at TU/e, where she puts her personal motto ‘Small things matter’ into practice.

Back in the day, Azahara Luna Triguero decided to study physics, since ‘that could lead me to the stars,’ she laughs. The physics department of the Universidad de Córdoba in Spain, where she obtained her Master’s degree, was very small. At least back then, she says. ‘We had some 20 students in the bachelor phase. As a result, we got a great deal of personal attention from the teachers, which shaped me in an important way. I am an extremely curious person, so for me being part of a community that enabled me to ask anything and exchange ideas not only with my fellow students but also with staff has been a great experience.’

During her studies, she got fascinated by the physics of atoms and molecules. After careful consideration, Luna Triguero decided to pursue a PhD at the Universidad Pablo de Olavide, de Sevilla on the topic of nanoscale materials for energy applications. That is where she found her true destiny. ‘I always knew I wanted to do research,’ she states. ‘And in the field of energy technology, I can really make a difference. If we want to develop new technology that works, we need to know why it works on a fundamental level to be able to reproduce that behavior.’

Open atmosphere
In September 2020 she joined TU/e. Her position at the Energy Technology group fits her like a glove, she says. ‘The atmosphere here is very open and international, and the relation between staff and students here greatly resembles what I liked so much when I was a student myself. Doors are open, staff is willing to discuss new ideas, and students are taken seriously. On top of that, the group itself is of a very multidisciplinary nature. Besides physicists like myself, we also have geoscientists, mathematicians, mechanical engineers, ... I think that it is essential for complex issues like the energy transition that we look at them from different perspectives, at a variety of scales and with a myriad of approaches.’

Another thing the physicist values are the good relations between the university and industry. ‘That is also something EIRES is of importance for,’ she comments, ‘since the institute can help in establishing external relations and starting alliances with people from outside the university. And now that we are finally getting back to campus, I hope EIRES will also help build network capacity on campus itself, connecting people from different departments working towards the same goal.’

Two research lines
The goal of Luna Triguero’s own research is clear. She wants to help industry find new materials that are crucial to make the energy transition happen. To this end, she studies physical and chemical properties of porous crystalline materials with the aid of classical molecular simulation techniques. Her main research interests are the adsorption-based capture and purification of valuable chemicals and adsorption-based thermochemical energy storage.

‘In my first research line, I look at fluids that can be used as new refrigerants which are more energy efficient and less toxic than the current refrigerants that are mostly based on hydrofluorocarbons,’ she explains. ‘I want to predict the thermophysical and thermodynamical properties of fluid mixtures under specific application conditions in order to come up with guidelines for finding new refrigerants.’ At the moment, this is a time-consuming process of trial and error. ‘The problem is, that the behavior of such mixtures changes in a non-linear way when you vary parameters like the pressure, temperature or composition. What we aim for is a model that can assess whether or not a certain mixture is worth trying or not.’

Her second line of research is aimed at materials for hydrogen storage and purification. The idea is to chemically modify material structures in order to store more hydrogen in less volume, at lower pressures and without the need of cryogenic cooling. This is crucial to reduce the costs of large-scale hydrogen storage to make the technology more competitive. In this research line in particular, Luna Triguero takes the pragmatic approach. ‘We want the solutions we come up with to be plausible, so we start from existing crystalline materials and modify them to achieve the desired behavior. For example, we are now looking at carbon nanotubes doped with gold atoms. We know that material to be stable and manufacturable. The question is how to improve its performance when it comes to storing hydrogen. What happens if we change the concentration of gold atoms? How does the diameter of the nanopores influence the adsorption? And what if we change from carbon nanotubes to graphene instead?’

Educating the workforce
Besides with her research, the ambitious scientist also wants to make a broader impact with her educational activities. ‘At the moment, I am coordinating a course aimed at lifelong learning. This course will be organized within the alliance between TU/e, WUR, UU and UMC Utrecht (EWUU). Researchers and lecturers will engage with municipalities and industries to exchange the latest insights and viewpoints with regard to energy technology in a broad sense. So we not only have engineers and natural scientists, but we also have people from law, social sciences, and communications involved. The first draft for the course has been constructed, and we hope to kick-off the pilot in January 2023.’