Chaofan Chen
Senior Lecturer at Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research (UFZ)
Leoben, Styria, Austria
Summary
👤
Senior🎓
Top SchoolChaofan Chen is a Senior Lecturer and computational geoscientist with nine years of experience specializing in integrated numerical modelling of geothermal exploitation and ground source heat pump systems. He develops coupled subsurface-to-surface simulations—covering closed-loop borehole heat exchangers, fracture-dominated reservoirs, and high-temperature two-phase wellbores—using OpenGeoSys and TESPy with C++ and Python. His work blends FEM development, thermodynamic design and optimization (including heat pumps and ORC plants), and practical code contributions to the prominent OpenGeoSys project where he implemented new BHE types and boundary-condition treatments. As a researcher at UFZ and academic at Montanuniversität Leoben, he has applied models to ATES, mine thermal storage and nuclear waste repository problems, bringing field-relevant complexity into open-source tools. Notably, he bridges deep technical implementation and system-level optimization, enabling coupled simulations that inform both research and engineering deployment.
9 years of coding experience
2 years of employment as a software developer
Dr. rer. nat., Applied Environmental Systems Analysis, Dr. rer. nat., Applied Environmental Systems Analysis at Technische Universität DresdenMaster of Science - MS, Engineering Mechanics, Master of Science - MS, Engineering Mechanics at China University of Mining and Technology, Beijing
English, Chinese, German
Github Skills (6)
simulations10
simulation10
c-language10
cprogramming-language10
freefem9
feh9
Programming languages (4)
Github contributions (5)
ufz/ogs
Sep 2018 - Jan 2021
DO NOT USE THIS REPO! Migrated to https://gitlab.opengeosys.org/ogs/ogs!
Role in this project:
Back-end Developer
Back-end DeveloperContributions:45 commits, 7 PRs, 53 comments in 2 years 3 months
Contributions summary:Chaofan primarily focused on implementing and refining features related to borehole heat exchangers (BHEs) within the OpenGeoSys (ogs) project. Their contributions included implementing new BHE types, such as the 1U, CXA, CXC and the related parameters configuration. Additionally, they documented the configuration parameters for the BHE implementations. The user's work involved significant modifications to the code related to the heat transport calculations and the creation of the correct boundary conditions.
chemical-engineeringgravityatmospheric-modellingsnl-applicationshydrology
ChaofanChen/ORCSimulator
Jan 2020 - Aug 2022
Simulation package for parametric optimization of a two-phase geothermal source ORC powerplant using TESPy
Contributions:131 commits, 5 PRs, 148 pushes in 2 years 7 months
power-plantorcpythongeothermalparametric
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