Dr. Filippone is an expert in nuclear engineering and related energy systems with decades of proven problem solving experience and out of the box thinking. He has worked on advanced thermal-hydraulic systems utilized in conventional and advanced nuclear, fossil-fuel burning, and renewable energy power systems. His expertise is based on many years of design, manufacturing, and testing of innovative complete thermal-hydraulic systems at the University of Maryland and through consulting assignments. His work has included technical evaluations and optimization of water moderated Generation IV advanced nuclear reactor designs with direct exposure to the heat transfer optimization of the Super Critical Water Reactor (SCWR). In 1997, Dr. Filippone developed an innovative thermal-hydraulic energy transport system called “heat cavity” able to operate with water in controlled different thermodynamic states in different zones of a nuclear reactor core. Among several non-nuclear applications, the heat cavities allow fine-tuning of the neutron flux energy in controlled zones of a reactor core, thereby impacting fuel burn-up, and favoring desired transmutations.
After several academic presentations and three articles published in The Economist on his non-conventional thermal-hydraulic systems, in 2005, he served as senior science advisor to Washington Policy and Analysis, Inc., a D.C.-based policy consultancy headed by the former Deputy Secretary of Energy and current chairman of the Department of Energy’s Nuclear Energy Research Advisory Committee. In 2006, the University of Maryland’s School of Public Affairs invited Dr. Filippone to develop and teach an interdisciplinary course in the greater Washington, D.C. area for students in engineering, business, economics, and political and government affairs on the interplay of rapidly developing energy producing technologies with complex national security, economic, nuclear proliferation, and pollutant emission issues in the post-9/11 world. Dr. Filippone has also taught several engineering courses over the past decade. From 2002 to 2005, he also served as the director of the University of Maryland’s Center for Advanced Energy Concepts.
Dr. Filippone’s expertise includes industrial processes inefficiency identification and energy management. Ranking of process weaknesses and pollutant sources, writing related reports, presenting selected aspects to financial, technical and policy making experts, providing advice on options feasibility, and helping financial and executive officers to select overall solutions. Examples of solutions often consisted of retrofitting current process equipment with customized technologies, adopting anti-pollution devices to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and other toxic pollutants, investing in new process components to meet pollutant caps and/or to improve energy utilization while conserving raw materials (i.e. process water and recyclables). As an example of non-nuclear related technologies, in 2005 Dr. Filippone developed a solar-powered pump station that operates without electricity, and with minimum moving parts, through specially designed solar power driven steam condensers.
Dr. Filippone was President of EL.EN.A. SpA (“Electronic Engineering Applications, Inc.”), in Rovereto, Italy. He has also conducted multiple consulting projects for leading international manufacturers and research centers and holds almost ten patents on energy recovery and conversion systems. He is the author and developer of CAESAR (Clean And Environmentally Safe Advanced Reactor) systems, an innovative and groundbreaking nuclear reactor design (www.caesar.umd.edu).
Dr. Filippone received his Ph.D. in Nuclear Engineering from the University of Maryland in College Park in 1996, and his Diploma of Maturità in Electrical Engineering from the Istituto Tecnico Industriale G. Marconi in Verona, Italy in 1983.