Technology Futures Institute
     

Sustainability

With Energy and the Environment one of the three pillars of all successful economic strategies, we have positioned ourselves to address pertinent issues including:

Clemance
Biotechnology

The enterprise activity is delivered through CLEMANCE our Clean Environmental Management centre.
Clemance website

  • the high per capita emissions of carbon dioxide by industry
  • hydrothermal carbonisation
  • cost of energy intensity and inefficiency in economic and environmental terms
  • waste treatment, exploitation and management
  • landfilling
  • industrial symbiosis
  • contaminated soil and sludge remediation
  • gas biofiltration
  • environmental diagnostics development
  • modelling for environmental protection

Three thrusts, Carbon Management, Industrial Symbiosis and Contaminated Land and Water serve to focus our activities. This includes collaboration with key national and international partners, such as Emden University, Oxford University, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, Ohio State University, University of Illinois, National Taiwan University, Ngee Ann Polytechnic, University of Genoa and University of Oklahoma, and international consultancies in Europe, the USA and Africa. The enterprise activity is delivered through CLEMANCE our Clean Environmental Management centre.
Clemance website

Carbon management - our expertise is in relation to the heavy industry and manufacturing base (including the SMEs) contribution of around 80% of the greenhouse gas emissions.

We have specific expertise in:

  • meta-analysis of carbon footprint data incorporation in overall carbon management strategies. This encompasses the actual and perceived barriers and the motivations in following such strategies while maintaining sound and economic footings in terms of output and profitability
  • bench marking and investigating the change management needed to implement the results of the analyses.

Through research and enterprise our ultimate goal is to develop and exploit a coordinated carbon strategy for the corporate environmental agenda.

Industrial symbiosis - from its earliest manifestation in 2003 as the Tees Valley Industrial Symbiosis Programme, the National Industrial Symbiosis Programme has evolved and we host the North East Regional Programme.

In its simplest terms, companies cooperate to use each others’ by-products, including materials, energy and process water, to maximise resource extraction value while minimising flows to and from the environment.

Although the initial goals were landfill diversion and carbon dioxide discharge abatement in harmony with the Low Carbon Britain Agenda, we see the production of valuable commodities from waste as a natural progression of this. So we have developed particular expertise in recycling, exploitation, eco-design and supply chain management.

A key research area is in the operation of plants and processes at their optimum efficiency, minimising inputs of energy and raw materials usage and undesirable outputs such as emissions and waste products.

Our work in this area is focused on developing novel sensor systems, particularly for gas and solid-gas mixtures, with application for example in air - fuel monitoring for combustion systems, power stations and for gas phase chemical reactions.

The work carried out, in particular pioneering work on electrostatic monitoring systems for pulverised fuel monitoring, has major industrial significance. It has led to commercial metering systems which are widely used in the power generation industry to control CO2 and NOx emissions.
Industrial Symbiosis Programme

Contaminated land and water - our research focuses on the harnessing of complex microbial associations (multi-species gene pools) to:

  • restore chemically compromised soils and sediments, with particular expertise gained in heavy metals, atrazine, oils, BTEX molecules and polyaromatic hydrocarbons
  • treat and exploit mine, industrial and domestic wastewaters (including aerobic culture bank provision and anaerobic digestion)
  • exploit solid waste (composting/landfilling).

These studies involve a complementation of disciplines including microbiology, molecular micoecophysiology, hydrogeochemistry, environmental chemistry and toxicology.

Parallel and complementary studies include:

  • use of biomass (renewable energy crops) for restoring brownfield sites (BioReGen) and electrochemical enhancement of the biotechnology
  • development of microarrays for environmental diagnostics
  • gas biofiltration
  • modelling for environmental protection
  • green engineering

Projects

  • National Industrial Symbiosis Programme
  • BioReGen

Academic staff

Research staff