Units

Aéro-thermo-mécanique

The ATM department is active in the fields of aerodynamics, aeronautical engineering, aerospace engineering, thermodynamics, thermal engineering and applied mechanics. The ATM team has developed a broad know-how and undertakes research projects applying this know-how for theoretical matters, numerical simulations and also test benches and experimental investigations.

Projetcs

CleanGas

The CLEAN-Gas Programme proposes an innovative approach to improve natural gas combustion in industrial processes, covering experiments and numerical simulations, including detailed chemistry and computational fluid dynamics applied to real complex geometries. This new way of addressing the European energy challenge by training candidates simultaneously in experimental and simulation techniques and in chemistry and turbulent combustion, all applied in industrial context, should add a clear value to the community.

The program is heavily supported by key-companies in the domain, such as Ansaldo Energia, the Italian leading producer of thermoelectric power plants, strictly connected with IT-POLIMI, Rolls Royce Deutschland, a world-leading provider of power systems, involved with DE-TUD and Numeca, a software developer and solution provider for computational fluid dynamics, including reacting flows and combustion.

Moreover, the development of new clean combustion processes is also strongly supported by local/national policy and initiatives in the context of greenhouse gas reduction and high efficiency energy conversion systems. In one hand, Companies are investing in research, such as the industrial partners of the present program. In another hand, national agency call-for-projects become numbers in the domain with active responses from partners, all encouraging the fundamental and applied research projects for a better efficiency of conventional energy, such as natural gas: FR-ECP with ANR in France; DE-TUD with DFG in Germany; BE-ULB with FNRS in Belgium (in particular WBGreen-call in fundamental research and WinGreen-call for industrial research).

Phoebus

In the world quest for new energy solutions, turning ‘end-of-life’ organic waste (plastics, rubber, foams, and so on) into manmade fuels is booming and demonstration industrial production units are being developed.  However, the resulting fuel quality is not always good enough for applications other than adding the fuel in small amounts to the crude oil used in petrochemical refineries. Such dilution results in little added value. Leveraging on the results of the Phoenix project conducted under Wallonia’s Marshall Plan, a consortium composed of two companies, Comet Traitements SA and Coretec Engineering SA, Certech, and ULB submitted PHOEBUS to the MecaTech Competitiveness Cluster. The project proposes the use of these fuels in high-added-value applications, such as in CHP technologies based on IC engines.
ATM is involved in PHOEBUS with the objective of achieving  efficient and clean combustion inside the CHP piston engine, using HCCI/RCCI modes.
To do so BURN's two main research engine benches will be used. The single cylinder Peter AV-1 research engine will be used to perform fundamental study about the fuel combustion in a Diesel engine. Then the new fully equipped 300 kW research bench will be used to develop a technology demonstrator and to carefully study the pollutants using a Horiba FT-one FTIR system, capable of dynamically measuring up to 29 components.

ENERBIO

This project aims to study the combustion of energy vectors issues  biomass. The study covers the entire production chain of these fuels, from the preparation of the material to the use of the biomass energy of gaseous fuels in an industrial burner or micro-turbine for cogeneration. This project, in collaboration with UCL, UMONS, CRA-W and ULB, is part of the new energy efficiency center and will enable the acquisition of an industrial burner fitted with the latest high-speed laser diagnostics.
Several industrial partners are involved in the project: Coretec, AGC, Xylowatt, MITIS, GDTech ... Indeed, the purpose of ERDF funding is on the one hand develop expertise in the field of biomass in Walloon universities but also to provide support to companies to overcome the challenges associated with these new fuels in an industrial context.