Hydrology
Water is a vital resource, providing various amenities such as drinking, irrigation, navigation and sustenance in the form of fluvial fauna and flora. Water quality is a crucial component of integrated water resources management. The environmental consequences caused by the increase of pollutant loads discharged into natural water bodies are now admitted, pushing the environmental management beyond “laissez-faire” tolerance. The aim of the Hydrology course is to provide an overview of the fundamental surface and subsurface hydrological processes related to water. The course will introduce hydrologic materials and methods: fluid mechanics (including open channel flow), probability and statistics, ground water, sediment transport, numerical modelling.
Teaching staff
Maria-Helena Ramos, Research Director, INRAE
Vazken Andreassian, Deputy Scientific Director, INRAE
Kamal El Kadi Abderrezzak, Engineer Researcher Expert, HDR, EDF R&D
Course outline
- Global hydrological cycle
- Watershed Management
- Water and energy balance, radiation, precipitation formation, infiltration, evaporation, vegetation transpiration, groundwater flow, storm runoff, and flood processes
- Hydrologic analysis and design: collection, compilation, and interpretation of data for quantification of the components of the hydrologic cycle
- Use of hydrologic variables and parameters for development, construction, and application of analytical models for selected problems in hydrology
- Flood estimation
- Hydrologic modeling
- Introduction to hydrologic modeling concepts, including rainfall-runoff analysis, input data, uncertainty analysis, lumped and distributed modeling, parameter estimation and sensitivity analysis
- Application of models for flood forecasting and prediction of stream flows in water resource applications
- Groundwater Hydrology
- Fundamental concepts of groundwater flow, transport and contamination
- Confined and unconfined aquifers
- Application and evaluation of methods to determine groundwater flow through Darcy’s law and pollutant transport using the advection-dispersion equation
- Determination of dispersion parameters by laboratory and field experiments
- Groundwater monitoring and sampling technology
- Urban flood modelling
- Flow in urban areas
- Numerical modelling of urban flood inundations
This module includes 20 hours of courses, 10 hours of tutorial classes and 10 hours of practical work.
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Level required: no prerequisite or basic knowledge of hydrology
Language: English
Credits ECTS: 5
Supervisor: Said Kinani, EDF
Program 2018/2019
Chemical storage of energy
Lecturer: Didier Dalmazzone
Chemical storage of energy
The transition toward low carbon economy will require an intensive use of renewable energies, as well as an optimization of the efficacy of energy usage in industry, household and transportations. To comply with those objectives, it is necessary to develop energy storage media that will have to meet strong expectations in terms of efficiency, versatility, transportability, reversibility etc. The chemical storage of energy is particularly well suited to reach the goal: on one side, electric batteries and fuel cells will soon offer competitive solutions for the replacement of internal combustion engines by electrical motors in terrestrial and marine vehicles; on the other side the conversion of biomass could provide new synthetic fuels for the propulsion of aircrafts and rockets. In addition, the chemical storage of energy will take a decisive part in the development of smart grids, by facilitating the match between the intermittent production by renewable sources and the varying demand.
Main outcomes
The course is intended to give a comprehensive overview of the principles, scientific basis and technological development of modern and future energy storage media based on electric batteries, hydrogen fuel cells, power-to-gas conversion. After taking the course, the students:
- will have developed their awareness of the technological and economic issues to overcome the energy transition challenges;
- will have acquired a theoretical knowledge of the various modes of chemical storage of energy;
- should be able to perform an efficiency assessment of various elements of the energy conversion and storage chain.
Pre-requisite: basic knowledge in chemistry and thermodynamics is preferable
Content of the course: 9 sessions (2h course + 2h training)
- Introduction (4 hours):
- history and perspectives of energy storage,
- the "peak shaving" problem,
- storage and smart grids
- Batteries (8 hours):
- fundamentals,
- technologies,
- industrial developments
- Hydrogen (12 hours):
- introduction,
- production,
- storage and distribution networks,
- conversion to energy (combustion, fuel cells)
- Power to gas (4 hours):
- principles and developments
- Energetic materials of the future (8 hours):
- basics of thermochemical conversion of biomass,
- synthetic fuels and propellants for air and space propulsion,
- combustion, safety and environmental issues.
Langue du cours : Anglais
Credits ECTS : 4
By the end of this course, students will be able to:
- Understand the fundamental principles of analytical method validation.
- Identify and apply the main validation criteria (fidelity, accuracy, specificity, linearity, etc.).
- Design a comprehensive analytical strategy in a regulatory or industrial context.
- Master the critical steps from sampling to instrumental analysis.
- Interpret results and the uncertainties associated with analytical protocols.
The experimental project (PREX) CHI583C is a practical course supervised in a research laboratory of chemistry. The aim is to undertake a research project in the context of the "Innovative Materials for Technology" Chemistry program during period 2. The students will select one of the various research topics presented during a show session before the PREX start. During their practical work, they will be guided by a faculty member, carrying out an advanced experimental project in one of the chemistry laboratories of Institut Polytechnique de Paris.
The projects deal with the preparation of innovative materials, the study of their properties and their applications. These are very often exploratory projects performed in close proximity with fundamental research aspect.
Do not hesitate to contact and meet researchers in laboratories to discover projects or if you are interested by a particular project:
- Laboratoire de Physique de la Matière Condensée: LPMC
- Laboratoire de Physique des Interfaces et Couches Mince: LPICM
- L'Institut Photovoltaïque d'Île-de-France: IPVF
At the end of the PREX, a written report will be submitted at the end of the course, and an oral presentation of the results will be made.
Course language: English
ECTS credits: 4
Main outcomes:
During this course, students will become familiar with important compounds in Materials Science. The exhaustive description of each compound and of their associated application will allow the students to understand the difficulty of designing new materials for a specific design. This course will also introduce them to original functional properties.
Course content:
Materials are present in many applications in our every-day life. A few of these materials have such specific and interesting properties (semi-conduction, ion conduction, piezoelectricity, luminescence…) that they occupy a central place in this list. We will describe here few of these compositions such graphene, BaTiO3, Y-doped ZrO2, PZT, … focusing on the relationship between composition, structures, and properties and we will present important applications. This description of specific properties will give us the opportunity to also describe scientific tools to characterize them.
The exam will consist of a list of questions concerning the different materials presented and the associated properties
