The Experts Pushing the Envelope: Frederik Brasz, PhD, Director of Modeling
Boston Metal is bringing specialists to the table to overcome challenges and pioneer innovation. Our team is made up of world-class scientists and metals industry veterans with deep technical expertise in metallurgy, electrochemistry, materials science, process engineering, systems modeling, thermodynamics and more. Get to know Frederik Brasz, an innovator at Boston Metal who specializes in computational modeling and data analysis.
Frederik is an expert in computational modeling with a focus on fluid mechanics and heat transfer. As Boston Metal’s newly appointed Director of Modeling, he brings years of experience in theoretical and practical applications of physics.
Since he was a kid, Frederik has been interested in math and science. His father was also a mechanical engineer, which played a part in sparking his initial interest in the field. Frederik enjoys understanding things at the most fundamental level, leading to earning his degree in physics and math at Williams College. While he enjoyed the theoretical side of physics, Frederik became interested in practical applications and went on to get his PhD in mechanical engineering from Princeton University.
“Compared to the academic environments and smaller start-up I have worked in previously, we have so much more ability to tackle these complex problems with a team as robust as ours.“
His post-doctoral research at Boston University and R&D work at another start-up offered him the opportunity to work on fluid mechanics problems through simulations, experiments and analysis. This comprehensive experience provided him with a strong foundation for his work at Boston Metal.
Frederik’s work directly contributes to improving many aspects of our Molten Oxide Electrolysis (MOE) technology and the modeling team has a strong iterative and collaborative process that goes hand-in-hand with the various teams and components of MOE.
The thermal modeling work Frederik leads helps inform cell design and his modeling work for the dynamic aspects of our inert anode helps to prevent anode degradation. The modeling team is continually testing model performance to ensure that its cell run predictions are accurate. Frederik and his team also characterize a huge wealth of data based on run conditions to identify where the gaps are and continue improving our technology.
Here’s how Frederik views his work:
What motivates you to continue pushing the envelope in your field?
There aren’t many companies where the technology you are developing can have such a huge potential to reduce carbon emissions. That is the ultimate motivation. Plus, our technology isn’t something you can go look up in a textbook. The challenge of working on problems that no one else has solved yet makes it that much more exciting.
What do you enjoy most about your current role and the impact you have?
For me, it is the combined effort towards achieving this very challenging goal and the satisfaction of accomplishing the little improvements along the way.
I enjoy the challenge of understanding problems at a technical level and translating that into measurable quantities that we can optimize through better process control. It is exciting to collaborate with such a diverse team of experts to target issues, develop solutions and advance our goals.
Compared to the academic environments and smaller start-up I have worked in previously, we have so much more ability to tackle these complex problems with a team as robust as ours.
If you were to describe the importance of the work you do, what would you say?
To make the technology work, we have to understand it. Being able to model and analyze our process is crucial to actually developing something we can scale at a competitive cost.
Learn more about the historic commissioning run of our multi-inert anode industrial demonstrator MOE green steel cell, made possible by the hard work of committed team members like Frederik.
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