"Our aim was to create a target that can maintain its liquid properties using a Capillary Porous Surface (CPS) to hold the metal in its liquid state. The original problem stems from parts of a reactor being damaged way too fast by the constant heat flux, thus melting and losing its structure. With a liquid metal held in place by a CPS, we can simply regenerate the melted metal as soon as it evaporates and not have to lose time dismantling the entire reactor to simply change out this piece. I was able to use my python skills at the job, but I had never worked with MATLAB before, so that is a new skill I developed. "
Lorenzo's Story
Lorenzo interned in Madrid, Spain at CIEMAT, the Centre for Energy, Environmental and Technological Research, and worked on the Optimization of Liquid Metal Advanced Targets (OLMAT) team writing scripts in MATLAB to analyze different types of data sets and helping set up experiments in a low-pressure chamber.
"My favorite part about MISTI was traveling. There is so much to see in the world, and in Europe specifically, that I simply could not imagine from this side of the world. In Europe every country has an entirely different culture and language which was really impressive to experience for me. I always knew the languages were different, but I never expected the change to be so impactful."Lorenzo Meléndez '27
Major & Class Year
Chemical Engineering & Nuclear Science '27
Location
Madrid, Spain
MISTI Program
Internship
MISTI Host
CIEMAT (Centre for Energy, Environmental and Technological Research)