|
|
Mission:
- To develop and
use advanced research methodologies for the
analysis of environmental systems.
- To promote the exchange
of knowledge in advanced technologies for the
optimisation of industrial processes and environmental
systems
Main
Research Areas:
The Laboratory is organised
on the basis of Research Areas, which include a range of
projects. These projects provide the necessary external
funding, namely from national and international funding
agencies and/or private companies. The following is a list
of the main Research Areas, under which the most important
activities under development are presented.
- Environment, Energy
and Industrial systems: Management and Policies for
Industrial Ecology
Environmental
Policies >>
Environmental
INPUT/OUTPUT analysis, EIOA
Energy Resources and the Competitiveness of the hand-made
glass sector >>
- Design for
Environment, DfE
LCA - Life-Cycle Analysis: fostering "Design for
Environment", DfE >>
LCAA - Life-Cycle Activity Analysis for industrial
ecology: application to the automobile industry
>>
Eco-parks: Fostering eco-systems and the challenges for
regional development
Renewable energies in buildings
- Environmental Physics
Momentum, Mass and
Heat transfer in the atmospheric boundary layer over and
within plant canopies. >>
Carbon Balance of Eucalyptus Plantations in Portugal -
towards the Kyoto Forest >>
The optimization of climate conditions inside greenhouses
for crop production >>
Research Topics and
Sample Results
[menu]
|
1. Environmental
Policies for Portugal
a prospective study
for 2000-2020, coordinated by Paulo Ferrão
and performed under the project "Engineerinng and
Technology 2000" - more
info
2. Environmental
Policies for Europe:
SUPPLIERS WITHIN AN
ECOLOGICALLY AWARE AUTOMOTIVE SECTOR
a prospective study coordinated by Paulo
Ferrão and performed under the Portuguese
Presidency of the EU
This vision of the
automobile sector, clearly shows that from a
regulatory point of view, the traditional emphasis
on production processes is no longer appropriate,
particularly in environmental policy and
regulation.
In line with recent
European Commission initiatives, an IPP-Integrated
Product Policy is to be considered. IPP addresses
the whole life cycle of a product, and seeks to
avoid shifting environmental problems from one
phase of the product life cycle to
another.
The ELV dismantling
and subsequent materials processing is thus a major
concern in this study, and it is to be viewed under
current and prospective trends for all the parties
involved, namely, OEM´s, first tier suppliers,
component suppliers, national states and finally,
at an EU level.
The promotion of
the closure of material and energy cycles within
the automotive life cycle and its interaction with
other products cycles, suggests that an adequate
conceptual framework for understanding this complex
non-structured systems may consist in Industrial
Ecology.... it provides a system-based approach,
able to analyze complex relationships in a
globalising world, and it is integrative, including
science, technology and environment, whose concepts
are very relevant for an adequate approach to the
analysis of suppliers within an ecologically aware
automotive sector.
download
paper
|
[menu]
|
Energy Resources
and the Competitiveness of the hand-made glass
sector
(portuguese
only)
- Perspectivas
sobre a utilização racional de
energia no sector da cristalaria: a
utilização do gás
natural
download
in pdf
format
(last updated: 20 Jul
2000)
- Perspectivas
para o desenvolvimento do sector de Cristalaria
Português no contexto internacional:
caracterização de empresas do
sector de cristalaria na república
checa
download
in pdf
format
(last updated: 20 Jul 2000)
Work promoted by
the Industrial Hand-made glass Association, AIC
(Associação Industrial da
Cristalaria)
|
[menu]
|
LCA - Life-Cycle
Analysis: fostering "Design for Environment",
DfE
Life-Cycle
Assessment (LCA) studies the environmental aspects
and potential impacts throughout a product's life
(i.e.cradle-to-grave) from raw material acquisition
through production, use and disposal. The general
categories of environmental impacts needing
consideration include resource use, human health,
and ecological considerations.
This method is
increasingly important and, for example, the EPA
(United States Environmental Protection Agency) is
internally placing heavy emphasis on developing and
implementing decision-making tools based on LCA.
EPA has found instances where a technology intended
to reduce wastes has created unanticipated impacts
in other media and/or stages of the life cycle. LCA
is being developed as a means to identify and deal
with these impacts before they occur. LCA differs
from other pollution prevention techniques in that
it views all the resource and energy inputs to a
product (Life Cycle Inventory), as well as the
associated wastes, health and ecological burdens
(Impact Assessment), and evaluates opportunities to
reduce environmental impacts (Improvement Analysis)
from cradle to grave.
Design for
Environment (DfE) is the systematic consideration
during design of issues associated with
environmental safety and health over the entire
product life cycle. DfE can be thought of as the
migration of traditional pollution prevention
concepts upstream into the development phase of
products before production and use. DfE is to de be
applied to the design of new and modification of
existing products, processes, and
facilities.
The objective is to
minimize or eliminate, during design, the
anticipated waste generation and resource
consumption in all subsequent life cycle phases:
construction, operation, and closure (or
production, use, and disposal).
Current work at IN+
through the coordination of Paulo Ferrão has
focused on the following industrial
sectors:
- Car components
(tires; batteries; plastic parts)
- Car
assembly
- glass, plastic
and other containers (bottles, food
containers)
See the text
books:
- Ferrão
(1998)
>>
- Ferrão
and Figueiredo
(2000)
>>
|
[menu]
|
LCAA -
Life-Cycle Activity Analysis for industrial
ecology: application to the automobile
industry
The design and
development of optimised end of life vehicles, ELV,
processing systems have been considered, addressing
the whole life cycle of car components, in an
industrial ecology perspective. Their contribution
to promote scale factors associated with increased
recycling rates in a small country, as Portugal,
has been particularly studied. Life Cycle Activity
Analysis, LCAA, has been developed and used for the
economic and environmental optimisation of critical
infrastructures, including the analysis of the
Portuguese used tire market.
Ferrão,
Freire, Thore & Reis (2000) - SAE Best Paper
Award
download
paper
|
[menu]
|
TOPIC: Momentum,
Mass and Heat transfer in the atmospheric boundary
layer over and within plant
canopies.
In order to
understand the mechanisms by which environmental
factors and agronomic treatments interact to
influence water use, photosynthesis, and water use
efficiency, it is necessary to measure exchanges of
energy and mass over a crop surface. The study and
characterisation of turbulent fluxes is necessary
to understand the transfer mechanism between the
atmospheric boundary layer and different soil
surfaces. This work is being coordinated by Gabriel
Pita and is aimed to study the development of
theoretical-experimental knowledge from the spatial
and temporal variability of turbulence and their
implications on the evaluation of the vertical heat
and mass fluxes above canopies.
The methodology to
be used is of interdisciplinary nature, involving
the scientific areas of fluid mechanics,
instrumentation, physical ecology and agricultural
sciences. The data related to the turbulent fields
above canopies with variable roughness are suitable
of adaptation to other surfaces, related with the
problems already mentioned.The main objectives
are:
i)
Evaluation of the vertical mass and heat fluxes
in the boundary layer, between the canopy and
the atmosphere
ii) Experimental
characterisation of the spatial and temporal
structure of turbulence.
In the first group
of objectives it is necessary to proceed in
surfaces representing different degrees of
roughness, to a characterisation of the turbulent
velocity field, as well to the detection of
possible coherent structures, associated with the
different types of canopies and to evaluate their
importance in the transfer processes.
The measurement of
the energy budget components: natural and forced
convection, leaf transpiration and total
evapotranspiration, soil heat conduction and
radiative budget from the surface layer under study
is a process of experimental optimisation of the
eddy correlation and energetic methods whether in
the selection of the parameters to search for a
rapid characterisation of the ecosystems, whether
in terms of optimisation of the sensors application
methodologies and their respective sampling
rates.
|
[menu]
|
TOPIC: Carbon
Balance of Eucalyptus Plantations in Portugal -
towards the Kyoto Forest
"The assumption
that increasing CO2 concentration in the atmosphere
may result in global warming led to theKyoto
Protocol (UNFCCC) that if signed will establish a
legally binding commitment to reduce greenhouse gas
emissions. In its article 3, the Protocol considers
that biological sources and sinks (namely forests)
can be used by the industrialised countries to meet
the commitment to reduce greenhouse gas emissions
by 5% below the 1990 levels, within the commitment
period of 2008-2012. In spite of a controversy
about the characterisation and the definition of
the activities of afforestation, reforestation and
deforestation_, it is obvious that most Eucalyptus
globulus plantations in Portugal may belong to the
so-called _Kyoto forests_, i.e. afforestation or
reforestation since 1990.
Managed forests
accumulate carbon both in biomass and in soil
organic matter, at least during the tree growing
phase until harvest or disturbance occurs.
Plantations may accumulate carbon at a very high
rate, especially when composed of fast-growing tree
species installed on previously agricultural land
with low carbon content. This is often the case of
eucalypt plantations in Portugal, where they cover
more than half a million hectares. The short
rotation of harvesting and the use of the above
ground biomass for pulp and paper, however, tend to
reduce the impact of these ecosystems in
longer-term carbon sequestration. In that case,
soils may be a major storage compartment, if
properly managed.
The work performed
in this area under the coordination of Gabriel Pita
was aimed to:
- Quantifying the
net ecosystem carbon exchange through the
continuous measurement of surface flux of carbon
dioxide using the eddy covariance method,
- The
quatification of carbon stocks by the inventory
of biomass components and changes in soil carbon
storage along a chronosequence of eucalypt
plantations in Herdade da Espirra.
- To extrapolate
the results found for carbon sequestration in
the main site, across a range of soil and
climate conditions in Portugal.
|
[menu]
|
TOPIC: The
optimization of climate conditions inside
greenhouses for crop production
The optimization of
climate conditions inside greenhouses for crop
production, in terms of the radiation, temperature,
mass (water vapour and CO2) and flow fields, led to
the development of new methods of climate control
as well as to the development of new cladding and
screening materials. The potential benefits
deriving from the use of screens in protected
horticulture have been increasingly recognised in
recent years. Therefore the use of both thermal and
screening materials have been widely used ( mainly
in the Northern Europe) since they can both
contribute to:
- Improvement of
the quality of the products since they
contribute to homogeneous radiative and
temperature fields;
- Reduction of
the energy consumption, both for heating and
cooling purposes, decreasing the production
prices; thermal screens is an effective mean of
reducing night time heat loss and shading
screens control the input of solar radiation.
- Reduction of
the chemical pesticides in the control of insect
borne diseases.
In Portugal, the
use of these materials is starting to be commonly
used but no scientific strategy and control
methodology adapted and suitable for our climatic
conditions have been established yet. A new
approach of the optimazation of the use of both
thermal and shading screens is needed for our
particular climatic conditions, in order to
increase the crop production and quality without
increasing the energy consumption. The winter
conditions in Portugal, though normally mild when
compared with the conditions in the northern
European countries, have quite often situations of
frost formation " geada negra" that can destroy the
entire crop, if no heating is provided; on the
other hand the overheating observed during a long
period of the year inside greenhouses, due to the
excess of solar irradiation, is a serious limiting
factor for the use of greenhouses during a
significant time period of the year, making the
greenhouse use still expensive and very
inefficient.
Therefore an
optimisation of the use of screens (thermal and
shading) in greenhouses is urgently needed and the
following scientific and technical objectives are
being developed under the coordination of Gabriel
Pita:
Establishment of
control algorithms to optimise the use of screens
inside greenhouses in conditioning the microclimate
;
Establishment of
the optimum strategies of using the screens both in
winter and summer periods;
To reach the
foregoing objectives, the following specific aims
have to be achieved:
I) The
energy budget of the greenhouse will be
evaluated, with and without screen, and the
effect of the screen in the total greenhouse
energy balance will be quantified.
II) Modelling
the dynamical behaviour of the greenhouse
climate with screens and its effect on the
physiological behaviour and development of the
crop.
|
[menu]
|
Laboratories
Menu
|
