- Current language: en
East Midlands
MoorLIFE2020
Conservation in the South Pennine Moors
Bakewell, Derbyshire
Conservation
The aim of the new MoorLIFE2020 project is to conserve and protect the priority active blanket bog habitat within the South Pennine Moors’ Natura 2000 site and the ecosystem services it provides. It will protect the integrity of around 9 500 ha of the target habitat. This is one of the largest LIFE projects ever financed with its 12 MEUR EU contribution.
The main purpose of the first Moorlife project was to protect the 1 600 ha of active blanket bog by reducing the erosion on adjacent degraded peatland. To achieve this, the project aims to restore 862 ha of active blanket bog through stabilisation, diversification and gully blocking. To ensure the future sustainability of the blanket bog, the project also aims to carry out wildfire mitigation actions while also raising public awareness of wildfire risk and restoration. The final objective is to develop knowledge and understanding by effective communication to practitioners and policy makers.
FLEXINET
Intelligent Systems Configuration Services for Flexible Dynamic Global Production Networks
Loughborough
Manufacture
Competitive manufacturing industry must be able to react to change and to understand the balance of possible options when making decisions on complex multi-faceted problems. Understanding how best to configure and re-configure a global production network, set against rapidly changing product-service requirements is one such complex problem area. This project aims to provide services that support the design and provision of flexible interoperable networks of production systems that can rapidly and accurately be re-configured. The metaphor employed is ‘to start with an new business idea in the morning and have all required data and networks understood by the afternoon’
To achieve this FLEXINET takes the view that new product-service global production network modelling methods and models are needed that can model business cases and identify the critical network relations and knowledge that underlies the business operation. In addition, FLEXINET takes the fundamental view that complex manufacturing systems which involve multiple partners and multiple complex network constraints, require a semantically rigorous formal foundation upon which to base the flexible re-configuration of global production networks.
Based on the exploitation of these technologies, FLEXINET will deliver a set of configuration services for flexible network design, applicable to both OEMs and SMEs, that will enable "what-if" comparisons of costs, risks, configuration evaluations and product-service compliance requirements for alternative production network designs. FLEXINET will achieve this aim by working with its industrial partners from the industrial pump, white goods and food sectors and exploiting the world leading expertise of its partners in business modelling, business evaluation methods, risk management, manufacturing semantics, manufacturing knowledge sharing, manufacturing eco-systems, product-service systems, SME collaboration, SOA, Interoperability and standardisation.
http://cordis.europa.eu/project/rcn/108887_en.html
BioBuild
High Performance, Economical and Sustainable Biocomposite Building Materials
Chesterfield
Energy
The aim of BioBuild is to use biocomposites to reduce the embodied energy in building facade, supporting structure and internal partition systems by at least 50% over current materials with no increase in cost. This will lead to a step change in the use of sustainable, low carbon construction materials, by replacing aluminium, steel, FRP, brick and concrete in buildings.
Facades are widely used in construction, primarily to protect and insulate the internal structure. Internal partitions are used to divide space, carry utilities and provide thermal and acoustic insulation. The current materials used such as aluminium, steel, brick and concrete are energy intensive to produce and have high embodied energy.
FRP is an alternative construction material, benefitting from low weight, formability and simple manufacturing, allowing low material content structures and innovative design. However, typical resin and glass fibre are non-renewable, energy intensive to synthesise. Biocomposites overcome these drawbacks, whilst maintaining the benefits, being based on natural fibres and bioresins which have low embodied energy and cost.
Biocomposites are renewable and sustainable resin and reinforcement structures. The resins in this project are furan and cashew nut oil based with reinforcing fibres of flax and jute. Bast fibres have lower environmental impacts than glass, concerning climate change and energy but have similar properties.
Biocomposites are used commercially in automotive interior parts, but for outdoor applications they can degrade due to moisture absorption and bio-degradation. BioBuild will develop biocomposites and construction products with a life span of 40 years, by protecting the fibres with novel treatments and coatings.
The result of the project will be a low cost, lightweight, durable and sustainable biocomposite building system, with full technical and environmental validation, offering low embodied energy construction materials.
http://cordis.europa.eu/project/rcn/101392_en.html
STREAMLINE
Strategic Research For Innovative Marine Propulsion Concepts
Derby
Conservation
Increasing environmental concerns and soaring oil prices are creating a new focus on fuel efficiency for the marine industry. Combining low emissions with demands for more advanced vessels than ever before drives the need for radically new propulsion concepts delivering a step-change in efficiency. STREAMLINE is the response of the marine community to this demand that will be addressed through four key objectives. The first objective of STREAMLINE is to demonstrate radically new propulsion concepts delivering an increase in efficiency of at least 15% over current state-of-the-art. The concepts will be designed for maximisation of energy conversion combined with low levels of cavitation, noise and vibration. The research will look at novel applications of large area propulsion, a biomechanical system and distributed thrust (via multiple propulsors). As its second objective, STREAMLINE will investigate methods to fully optimise current SoA systems including conventional screw propeller systems, pods and waterjets. The key here is exploitation of new CFD methods to pursue improvements without dramatic vessel configuration changes. The third objective of STREAMLINE is to develop advanced CFD tools and methods to optimise the hydrodynamic performance of the new propulsion concepts, particularly by analysis of integrated hull and propulsor. Finally, STREAMLINE will characterise the operational, economic and classification aspects of each of the new propulsion concepts. STREAMLINE will demonstrate solutions for a wide range of applications. Short sea shipping and inland waterway operation will be focussed on specifically, as they are identified as key components of transport that can provide a means of coping with the growing congestion of road and rail infrastructure and tackling air pollution. The STREAMLINE consortium, led by Rolls-Royce, is made up of 30 partners from 8 Countries, providing world leading expertise and capability from the EU marine Industry.
