Koenraad joined NREL in 2016 and is currently a research engineer in the Energy Conversion and Storage Systems Center, working on geothermal energy and solar thermal projects. Current projects include geothermal reservoir simulations for hydrothermal; enhanced geothermal systems (EGS) and closed-loop geothermal systems; geothermal techno-economic modeling including for direct-use applications and power plants; and hydrogen mitigation research and development for concentrating solar power (CSP) parabolic trough plants.

Research Interests

Techno-economic analysis, low-temperature applications, surface plant modeling, and reservoir modeling for geothermal energy

Hydrogen mitigation for CSP parabolic trough plants

Heat and mass transfer, and energy conversion and storage systems

Education

Ph.D. Chemical Engineering, Cornell University, USA

M.Eng. Chemical Engineering, Cornell University, USA

M.S. Mechanical Engineering, University of Leuven, Belgium

B.S. Mechanical Engineering, University of Leuven, Belgium

Featured Work

Techno-Economic Performance of Closed-Loop Geothermal Systems for Heat Production and Electricity Generation, Geothermics (2022)

Modeling Subsurface Performance of a Geothermal Reservoir Using Machine Learning, Energies (2022)

Evaluating the feasibility of geothermal deep direct-use in the United States, Energy Conversion and Management (2021)

The evolving role of geothermal energy for decarbonizing the United States, Energy & Environmental Science (2021)

Hybrid ground-source heat pump systems for cooling-dominated applications: Experimental and numerical case-study of cooling for cellular tower shelters, Energy and Buildings (2018)

Addressing solar power plant heat transfer fluid degradation: Experimental measurements of hydrogen transport properties in binary eutectic biphenyl/diphenyl ether, Solar Energy (2018)

Slender-body theory for transient heat conduction: theoretical basis, numerical implementation and case studies, Proceedings of the Royal Society A (2015)

Levelized costs of electricity and direct-use heat from Enhanced Geothermal Systems, Journal of Renewable and Sustainable Energy (2014)

The transformative potential of geothermal heating in the U.S. energy market: A regional study of New York and Pennsylvania, Energy Policy (2014)

Cost analysis of oil, gas, and geothermal well drilling, Journal of Petroleum Science and Engineering (2014)

Sustainable heat farming: Modeling extraction and recovery in discretely fractured geothermal reservoirs, Geothermics (2013)