Scientific and technical impact
Social and economic impact
Scientific and technical impact
Several points of the proposal have been identified to likely produce a great impact on the scientific community. The use of ozone would reduce the fouling presence in post-combustion heat exchangers, will modify the combustion parameters inside the engines, would require the use of new operating parameters, new materials, and development of new devices and controls systems. As a result of the experimental work carried out, a comprehensive database concerning operating points, ozone flow rates used, concentrations required, pollution reductions achieved, the materials used and new devices developed, will be obtained and made available to the scientific community. With this approach, at least 2 indexed JCR publications are expected to be launched, and the developed patterns could be susceptible to protection and patent. If this were the case, the impact on the technology would be very high, constituting a great technological advantage. On the other hand, the results of the experimentation will be analyzed to release new correlations and/or improve the existing ones. The results of the experiments, once correlated, will feed a numerical model that can be applied to the pre-design of future ozone systems, reducing time and costs associated with this stage, constituting an important technological innovation for the sector, that will be protected and transferred to the sector. In this sense, the requesting team has previous experience in developing and transferring applications. At least two indexed JCR publication is expected in this line.
If successful results are achieved in the migration from laboratory tests to the use of in real environment prototype, the new technology proposed will potentially increases the effectiveness of current emission reduction systems, as well as a potential increase in the life of both: engines and anti-pollution devices, maintaining their effectiveness over time. The technology will have a significant impact on the development of new specific anti-pollution systems, and on their integration with those already existing in many sectors. The results obtained may also be extrapolated to developing new specific technologies, which will potentially be useful in applications such us electricity generation, biomass, maritime and land transport, etc. This transfer between different applications could be carried out in a period of about two or three years, since it can start from a functional prototype.
Therefore, the results of the proposed research in this application are meant to attract the interest of manufacturers, a fact which is reinforced by the longstanding relationship between this sector and the research group and the interest shown by important companies as the multinational BorgWarner, world leader in the development of anti-pollution devices for the automotive industry, in this proposal. The interest has expressed through a support letter. Due to space limitations, the letter is not included here and, the original is in possession of the University of Vigo for consultation, if required. In addition to the interest raised in the automotive sector, it is of potential interest in the global maritime and land transport, as well as agricultural machinery, or the electricity generation sector. In this call type it is essential to be able to transfer the results obtained in the experimental proof of concept, to a prototype in an operational environment. In this sense, it is worth highlighting the award for the best success case of technology transfer for large companies, awarded by the Royal Academy of Sciences and the Galician Innovation Agency, obtained by the research group, as a sign of the team proved technology transfer capability.
Social and economic impact
SOCIAL IMPACT
The project is mainly framed in different challenges related with sustainable and efficient transport and clean energy, aligned with the Spanish and European scientific policy. The proposal goes deeper into the reduction of pollutants emission and the increase of thermal efficiency, challenges that it has to be faced by automotive sector, from the point of view of increasing performance and developing of environmentally friendly technologies that could be investigated for automotive application. In both aspects the proposal is aligned to the achievement of Sustainable Development Goals. The result of any improvement achieved in the technological development presented, which is intended to increase the effectiveness and efficiency of emission reduction systems, implies an undoubted global social improvement in terms of pollution reduction. Moreover, the contribution to the emissions level caused by particulate matter emitted by combustion facilities, is associated with benefits to human health, and the reduction of harmful effects on climate.
ECONOMIC IMPACT
In all systems where combustion engines are used, such as conventional maritime transport, or land transport with biofuels combustion systems, there are potential interested in the development of specific ozone equipment. Current regulations, and competition with new technologies will force manufacturers to extend the use of more effective anti-pollution systems in all engines, and to increase the vigilance over their compliance throughout the longer life of the vehicle. Similarly, for example, in the case of biomass boilers, with enormous potential of growth, but whose technological maturity has not yet been reached, it will be one of the sectors that could benefit from the technological developments of this project. These and other sectors associated with energy production will need to design, develop, test and manufacture these systems in the coming years, with millions of potential users, which represent a great business opportunity and job creation. The manufacture of these ozone systems will imply the creation of employment in different areas and capacities, from highly qualified engineering jobs that deal with high-level technological development, to job positions related to assembly and manufacturing, intermediate tasks, logistics, commercial, etc.
EMPLOYMENT GENERATION
Both the manufacture of the equipment leaded by the team and the activities subcontracted to suppliers are intended to be developed within the local industrial environment. This will require job positions. Moreover, the development of this new technology proposal will increase the know-how and the positioning of the participating companies, which would allow them to maintain and strengthen the company’s position in the market, as leaders and technological reference in many aspects of its industrial activity, also maintaining the competitiveness of its products. The manufacturing sector in Spain, mainly associated with the automotive sector, has a significant weight in the Spanish industry, thus the challenge of becoming leaders of these new technologies in the transport sector could be assumed, which would translate into an important competitive advantage. The impact associated with the development of this new technology could result for automotive sector in increasing its competitiveness and promoting the creation of new jobs, and also the companies could increase its market share and its internationalization capacity. A meeting plan has been drawn up for establishing contacts with potentially interested companies, potential users, social agents, organizations and public services. In addition, the know-how in ozone techniques developed in the proposal, design of new specific devices, utilization of new materials, obtaining of experimental correlations, could be transferred to different sectors, multiplying the potential effect of job creation, economic movement and increase of exports.
This project will have a positive impact on the University of Vigo’s positioning when it comes to developing innovative solutions close to the market, which is a necessary turning point in R&D&I systems that are to be promoted at European level. The development of the project will also increase the internationalization of the research group. Previous relationship maintained in previous phases of research with international centers will be reinforced with the development of the project. In addition, the training that has been planned, that promote the entreprenurial skills, for all the research staff, would increase the knowledge transference capacity, help to developing an innovation-friendly culture in the research team, creating an favorable environment to innovation and technological process, in which research team feels comfortable sharing ideas and discussing the emerging innovative solutions, and opens the possibility of creating spin offs.
Since the goals are aligned with the new European policies and the interest of sector is clear, the development of the proposal will increase the know-how and the positioning of the research group in the field of emissions reduction increasing the possibility to achieve success in next European calls. There are realistic options for funding attraction. Depending on the positive progress of the project, it is an open the incorporation of private capital and/or other funding sources could be necessary to scale up to other segments in vehicles, marine or stationary applications.
DIFFUSION
The expected results of the project will be published in international journals in the fields of thermal and fluid mechanics, applied energy, energy and fuels, engineering mechanical, transport, and will also be disseminated at international conferences related to these fields.
The University of Vigo’s institutional repository Investigo, will be used to manage the results of the research (http://www.investigo.biblioteca.uvigo.es/xmlui?locale-attribute=es). This repository is integrated into the FECYT’s national open access scientific repository aggregator, the RECOLECTA project. The management and continuous maintenance are centralized by the University, guaranteeing the security of the participating researchers and strict compliance with the regulations and possible corresponding patent and copyright rights. In addition, it is suitable for all possible research results that are generated, since it includes: articles, books, chapters or parts of books, contributions to conferences and doctoral theses. From the point of view of disseminating scientific production, this repository is open access, and is designed to increase the visibility of scientific production and is intercommunicated with the main national and international research repositories. Finally, the Interuniversity Consortium of the University System of Galicia (CISUG) and the Xunta de Galicia have achieved recently new agreements with most of the scientific publishers: Elsevier, Cambridge University Press, Oxford University Press, etc. The agreements are part of the support for Open Science and their ultimate goal is to accelerate the transition to open access (OA), facilitate compliance with the requirements of funding agencies and increase the visibility of research.