PRESS RELEASE – An international research team supervised by Professor Jiri Klemes is starting a new project called Sustainable Process Integration Laboratory (SPIL) at the NETME Centre. The project is to last five years and is subsidized from the Operational Program Research, Development and Education. The research team aims to provide unique and practical results that will help increase the efficiency of process and power industries.
The alarming values of greenhouse gases lead the attention of the team to the minimization of the so-called carbon footprint as well as nitrogen, ecological and water footprints. The team strives to provide complex energy-saving solutions. Success of the future research is substantiated by the long-term, worldwide research activities of Professor Jiri Klemes, an international scientist.
Professor Klemes has worked at foreign universities for decades. He is also a frequent participant at important scientific conferences and has coordinated the PRES conference (Conference of Process Integration, Modelling and Optimisation for Energy Saving and Pollution Reduction), a prestigious conference dedicated to topics such as integration of processes and sustainability.
Professor Klemes has decided to relocate to the NETME Centre, within the Faculty of Mechanical Engineering at the Brno University of Technology, to supervise the new research project. The professor’s goal is to make the SPIL a facility that is comparable to similar international laboratories and that is also able to compete with them.
“At the end of my career, I’ve decided to come back to Brno and use my reputation to bring some excellent foreign researchers with me. Research is a bit like genetics and new blood is always useful. I’m glad that in addition to researchers from the Energy Institute and Institute of Process Engineering from the Brno Faculty, there will also be researchers from New Zealand, Bulgaria, Slovenia, Malaysia and China in the team,” said Professor Klemes, Director of the new Laboratory.
The SPIL project will initiate cooperation with four renowned international universities: the University of Manchester from the UK, University of Maribor in Slovenia, Universiti Teknologi Malaysia in Johor Bahru, and Hebei University of Technology in Tianjin, China. The team will profit from common research, exchange of research knowledge, writing of expert publications, mobility and cooperation with PhD students. All of these activities will further strengthen the international nature of the NETME Centre.
FME and BUT will greatly benefit from the international nature of the research and its competitiveness as well as from an increase in the reputation of the Centre and the potential arrival of new, foreign PhD students.
“When deciding on a university, PhD students consider not only various charts comparing the quality of the universities; they also look for personalities working at those particular universities. This is the case especially for technical students. Starting a scientific career is thus much easier for them,” says Professor Klemes. And he continues: “Young researchers are an invaluable contribution. We must create excellent working conditions for them so that they may discover and invent something new. We at the NETME Centre have succeeded and created this environment for them.” Research at the SPIL project commences in February 2017 and will last five years.
MEDIA KIT
SPIL project (Sustainable Process Integration Laboratory)
The project, established at the NETME Centre (Faculty of Mechanical Engineering at the Brno University of Technology), is guided by an international research team, supervised by Professor Jiri Klemes. The SPIL project has been drafted and developed at the NETME Centre and subsidized from the Operational Program Research, Development and Education. The project commenced on 1 February 2017, and will last five years. The project objective is to establish an international, competitive research facility, and to simultaneously provide both unique and practical knowledge which will promote an increase in efficiency of processes and power industries, in other words knowledge that will help minimize the so-called greenhouse, nitrogen, ecological and water footprints.
NETME Centre
NETME Centre is a regional R&D centre built at the Faculty of Mechanical Engineering, Brno University of Technology, Czech Rep. The Centre was established in 2010 and quickly became a modern R&D centre. The NETME Centre especially strives to innovate mechanical engineering and machine industry in the Czech Republic. The Centre further helps promote expert knowledge so that the mechanical engineering disciplines may thrive and be sustainable in the future.
The Centre focuses on four technical disciplines: aircraft industry, automobile industry, power industry and manufacturing technology.
NETME is part of the Faculty of Mechanical Engineering, Brno University of Technology
