Nipun Goel, Ph.D.

Bio

Dr. Nipun Goel joined Boise State University in August 2019 as a Postdoctoral Research Associate in Mechanical and Biomedical Engineering. His area of research primarily focuses on heat transfer and thermodynamics for a wide range of applications. The overarching area of application for many of these is in the field of renewable energy technologies including concentrated solar power, thermo-electrics and photovoltaics.

Dr. Goel completed his Ph.D as well as MS in Mechanical Engineering from Lehigh University. He did his B.Tech in Power Engineering from Guru Gobind Singh Indraprastha University in Delhi, India. Prior to joining Boise State University, he worked for a startup in Los Angeles as Energy Scientist. As an energy scientist, he evaluated energy efficiency for consumer appliances and assisted energy utilities pass monetary and energy savings to consumers by encouraging consumers to switch to energy efficient appliances.

Education

Ph.D. in Mechanical Engineering — Lehigh University, Bethlehem PA (2012 – 2016)
Dissertation: “Effect of dopants at the grain boundary on the thermal transport in SiC at high temperatures” 
Co-Advisor: Dr. Alparslan Oztekin (Reference Available)
Co-Advisor: Dr. Edmund B. Webb III (Reference Available)

M.S. in Mechanical Engineering — Lehigh University, Bethlehem PA (2010 – 2012)
Advisor: Dr. Edward K. Levy (Retired)

Industry Experience

Energy Scientist — Enervee Corporation, Venice CA (2017 – 2018)

• developed efficiency metric for consumer appliances. These products included those with energy star or energy efficiency standard as well as those without.
• Researched product attributes to make the efficiency scores more meaningful based on everyday use of appliances by consumer

Energy Efficiency Engineer — Enervee Corporation, Venice CA (2016 – 2017)

• As Energy Efficiency Engineer, I developed mathematical equations that translate product attributes, performance, and energy efficiency metric into an easy to understand efficiency score.
• As a part of the data team, I learned data mining from retailer feeds to capture vital product information for effective scoring.

Lead Energy Assessor — Industrial Assessment Center, Lehigh University (2012 – 2016)

• Spearheaded DoE sponsored energy assessments at more than 30 small and medium sized manufacturing plants in PA/NJ
• Illustrated energy usage best practices to plant personnel with detailed energy savings calculations and data analysis.
• Made more than 350 independent energy savings recommendations, roughly 40% of which were implemented by the plants and saved more than $1Mil in energy costs.

Materials Engineer — Bechtel India Private Limited, Gurgaon, India (2008 – 2010)

• Created piping material design specification datasheets, reviewed and negotiated vendor proposals, and generated material requisitions ensuring timely delivery of materials to site keeping the project on schedule.
• Coordinated with Quality Control and prevented delivery of sub-standard flexible couplings and other smaller piping materials to the site.
• Performed stress calculations for piping and mechanical equipment, thus allowing for re-routing of piping or requesting addition of appropriate supports and prevented equipment failure.
• Key point of contact between Client, Design/Site Team and Vendor

Publications

• Nipun Goel, Tessa Mei-Lin Fong, John Shingledecker, Andrew Russell, Michael W. Keller, Siamack A. Shirazi, Todd Otanicar, Effect of temperature on Abrasion Erosion in particle based Concentrating Solar Powerplants: Under review with Solar Energy To be Submitted
• Nipun Goel, Hannah O’Hern, Matthew Orosz, Todd Otanicar, Annual Simulation of Photovoltaic Retrofits within Existing Parabolic Trough Concentrating Solar Powerplants, Solar Energy 211 (2020) 600 – 612 2020
• Nipun Goel, Robert A. Taylor, Todd P. Otanicar, A Review of Nanofluid-Based Direct Absorption Solar Collectors: Design Considerations and Experiments with Hybrid PV/Thermal and Direct Steam Generation Collectors, Renewable Energy 145 (2020) 903 – 913 2019
• Goel, N., Webb III, E. B., Rickman, J. M., Oztekin, A., & Neti, S., Thermal transport across symmetric tilt grain boundaries in β-SiC: Effect of dopants and temperature. AIP Advances 6, 075101 (2016) 2016
• Goel, N., Webb III, E. B., Oztekin, A., Rickman, J. M., & Neti, S., Kapitza resistance at segregated boundaries in β-SiC. Journal of Applied Physics, 118(11), 115101 2015
• Conference proceeding: “Performance and Cost-Benefit Analyses of Condensing Heat Exchangers for Cooling Boiler Flue Gas”, by: Edward Levy, Daniel Hazell, Nipun Goel (self), Gordan Jonas, Harun Billirgen (37th International Technical Conference on Clean Coal and Fuel Systems 2012: The Clearwater Clean Coal Conference) 2012

Research Experience

Postdoctoral Research Associate

Postdoctoral Research Associate – To Dr. Todd Otanicar in Department of Mechanical and Biomedical Engineering, Boise State University (Reference Available) (Relocated from The University of Tulsa in 2019)

• Building a durability model for use in Gen3 CSP research to identify optimal material and particle combination that would yield highest thermal efficiency with low operation and maintenance costs
• Designed and conducted experiments to measure abrasion, attrition and impact erosion in particle based CSP power plant at temperature >800°C
• Evaluated concentrated photovoltaic retrofit systems for existing parabolic trough concentrated solar power systems. The work determined that, for CSP plants with large footprint, the overall energy generation could be increased by as much as 25% 2018 – present

Visiting Research Associate

Visiting Research Associate – To Dr. Jeffrey M. Rickman in Department of Material sciences and Engineering, Lehigh University (2016 – 2016)

• Developed computational codes to calculate the energy of grain boundary profile obtained from electron beam image processing.
• The goal of the work was to provide input for new manufacturing technologies for building nano-scale material systems.

Research Assistant

Research Assistant — To Drs. Alparslan Oztekin and Edmund B. Webb III in Department of Mechanical Engineering, Lehigh University (2012 – 2016)

• The research focused on methods to reduce thermal conductivity of ceramic materials for high temperature thermoelectric applications. Particularly, focus of the work was on the role of dopants in enhancing phonon scattering at the grain boundaries. Dopant characteristics like mass and stiffness, could were determined to influence phonon scattering. Furthermore, it was also determined that dopants can potentially hinder the increase in thermal conductivity of material at higher temperatures.
• Another key finding from the project was the role of optical phonons in thermal transport. Lattice dynamics calculations on systems determined that in nano-scale regime, contributions to thermal transport from optical phonons can quickly become significant.

Research Assistant

Research Assistant — To Dr. Edward K. Levy at Energy Research Center, Lehigh University  (2010 – 2012)

• The research was aimed at designing heat exchangers placed in the flue gas circuit to enhance water vapor condensation and waste heat recovery. A MATLAB code was built for simulations and validated using a lab scale model at the Central Heating and Cooling unit at Lehigh University.
• Performed lab scale experiments to characterize coal samples and tested a new coal drying technology to increase power plant efficiency