Last July, the kick-off meeting of the COLHIBRI project was held at the CIDAUT facilities. The meeting was attended by the project partners: COGERSA, IMASA TECHNOLOGIES (IMATECH); Ingeniería y Biogás, S.L. (Inbiogas); JALVASUB Engineering SL and CIDAUT Foundation as coordinator.
The general objective of this project is to develop new systems for the production of electrical and thermal energy based on H2 technologies that constitute a more efficient and cleaner alternative to current cogenerations based on ICE (Internal Combustion Engine). It is also intended that, within the solutions based on H2 technologies, the proposed interaction between them will allow an advantageous solution to be obtained in terms of both investment and operating costs. The strategic objectives consider enhancing the transition towards the circular economy and creating more efficient ways for the production of renovable H2 from biogas, as well as increasing the available supply of renewable H2 and decarbonising the waste treatment industry (WWTP, landfills, anaerobic digestion of waste, etc.).
The kick-off meeting served to officially start research on each of the subsystems that make up the mobile research laboratory that will eventually integrate the complete system consisting of the biogas treatment system, the reforming system for obtaining H2 and the high-temperature PEM stack that will use the H2 obtained. The consortium was convened for an upcoming meeting to start sharing the requirements of each of these subsystems.
During these months, work has also been carried out on the development of the project website (https://colhibri.es/), as well as on the presentation of the project at various dissemination events such as the Green Gas Mobility Summit in Madrid and the III Renewable Gas Exhibition (III Salón del Gas Renovable) in Valladolid.
This project, with file number PR-H2CVAL4-C1-2022-0054, has been approved in the first call corresponding to the “Incentive Programme 4: Basic-Fundamental Research Challenges, Innovative Pilots and Training in Key Enabling Technologies within the Incentive Programmes for the Innovative and Knowledge-based Renewable Hydrogen Value Chain”, included in the framework of the Incentive Programmes for the Innovative and Knowledge-based Renewable Hydrogen Value Chain in the Framework of the Recovery, Transformation and Resilience Plan – Funded by the European Union – NextGenerationEU.
In recent months, CIDAUT has participated in various conferences and congresses to discuss and disseminate CIDAUT’s vision of the current energy transition.
On 27 June, Alfonso Horrillo, head of CIDAUT’s Energy and Environment area, moderated the round table “Society and Energy Transition” at the 10th Sernauto Congress. He discussed the need to decarbonise mobility by using technologies that allow us to find the right solution for each type of mobility. To this end, we have the challenge of offering citizens sustainable and affordable mobility while maintaining the competitiveness of the industry.
The III OKGREEN Conference “Present and future of green hydrogen in Castilla y León” was held on 5 July in Valladolid, organised by Ok Diario and sponsored by DH2 Energy. José Ignacio Domínguez, head of Energy projects at the CIDAUT Foundation, participated by commenting on the importance of renewable hydrogen as a decarbonising energy vector. He also recalled that we are at the moment of implementing the new hydrogen economy, being necessary to continue with the technological development to reduce costs and increase the reliability of these hydrogen technologies.
Finally, CIDAUT also actively participated in the Green Gas Mobility Summit 2023, organised by GASNAM-Neutral Transport on 20 and 21 September in Madrid. This congress is the reference point for the use of renewable gases in the mobility sector in Spain. During this event, CIDAUT presented different initiatives in which it is working to introduce hydrogen in maritime and road transport. Some of these projects in which CIDAUT participates are: Hydromar project, NewBunker project, Zeppelin project and Colhibri project.
The STWIN project, coordinated by CIDAUT, will develop a flexible friction stir welding (FSW) system capable of automatically fabricating complex structures, for a variety of joint configurations, and for a range of steel grades and thicknesses used in the metal construction, automotive and transport sectors.
The project will address the need to improve productivity in the metalworking sector, improvement of the working conditions for welders and operators and the shortage of skilled welding personnel in Europe. This will be achieved by exploiting the specific advantages of the friction stir welding process, in combination with real-time quality control, based on innovative non-destructive testing and their integration with artificial intelligent and smart digital twin solutions. This will lead to a zero-defect manufacturing approach ensuring robustness, stability and repeatability of the process.
In FSW, a rotating tool is pressed into the gap between two parts. The friction between tool and parts produces heat, which leads to plasticising of the materials. The tool is then moved along the joint line. The combination of translation and rotation of the tool transports the material behind the tool, thus creating the joint.
In STWIN, a novel real time monitoring and control system will be built and demonstrated. The intention is to use the measured process parameters like rotation speed, forces, complemented with the measurements by a smart combination of sensors. These relationships will be used by closed-loop AI control algorithms, which will enable real time adjustment of process parameters, guaranteeing an improved joint quality, towards a more sustainable and defect-free production.
The research leading to these results has received funding from Horizon Europe under Grant Agreement nº 101112504.
A few years ago Euro NCAP created the five-star safety rating system to help consumers and businesses compare vehicles more easily. In fact, the number of stars is a fair and transparent picture of how safe a car really is. However, a car can meet the minimum legal demands and it is not eligible for any stars. This does not mean that this car is necessarily unsafe, but it is not as safe as its competitors.
Within what is evaluated, Euro NCAP bases its assessment on four important areas:
Adult Occupant Protection (driver and passenger);
Child Occupant Protection:
Vulnerable Road Users protection; and
Safety Assist, which evaluates driver-assistance and crash-avoidance technologies.
In this last area is where the University of Surrey, in collaboration with CIDAUT and IFEVS, have developed a simulation model which permits the emulation of the advance driver-assistance systems performance. Specifically, it is able to reproduce the performance of the ADAS features that intervene when a car-to-car rear-end crash takes place.
To avoid such crashes, one type of ADAS in the market presently is the collision avoidance system (CAS), which is design to prevent or reduce the severity of the collision. CAS can be further divided into two categories – Autonomous Emergency Braking (AEB) and Forward Collision Warning (FCW). The simulation model developed within the framework of Multi-Moby project is able to emulate the workings of these two systems and to predict the consequences of different accident scenarios. Additionally, the model can reproduce all the case that Euro NCAP takes account in determining the Safety Assist score.
The research leading to these results received funding from the European Union project MULTI-MOBY (GA# 101006953)
Automated driving is currently one of the major research topics in the automotive field, mainly motivated by the improvement of the safety [[1]]. It is supposed that automated driving will eliminate human error thank to the use of technology; however, as long as the automated vehicles continue to have to share the road with conventional cars, accidents will continue to occur. Against this background, CIDAUT together with i2CAT and CTAG have carried out a simulation model chain aimed at determining the occupant injuries after a side collision in an automated vehicle and in a complex urban environment at different speeds. To do this, it was necessary to digitally simulate both the environment where the accident takes place and the vehicle’s communications (i2CAT), as well as the autonomous car itself (CTAG). For its part, CIDAUT was responsible for determining the damage to the occupant caused by the accident.
The fact that the simulation tool focus on side collisions is principally due to the accidentology study carried out as part of the European OSCCAR project, in which CIDAUT participated. Specifically, it concluded that considering mixed traffic conditions, side impacts will continue to be common in autonomous vehicles (it is estimated that around 20% of the total).
Under that premise, the developed tool chain is able to simulate the consequences of a side impact over the occupant at different positions, and taking into account the communications with other vehicles or infrastructure. Briefly, the fact of being able to simulate V2X Communications allows us to know when the vehicle is informed about the risk of collision. In this way, we can adjust the parameters of the restraint system more realistically, taking into account that this information will allow us to deploy the airbags earlier.
This work is part of @INTEGRA project, an initiative that pursue projects and activities that respond to the major challenges of a new, safer, smarter, more sustainable, connected and automated mobility. The project, which is funded by CDTI through Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovación in the frame of the funding for Excellence in Research Centres “Cervera”, involves the three research centres mentioned above: CTAG, CIDAUT and i2CAT, in addition to ITENE.
[1] Watzening D., Horn M. (2016) Automated driving: safer and more efficient future driving, Springer Interntional Pubishing. ISBN: 978-3-319-31893-6.
