Poster Award Ceremony at WindEurope’s “Electric City 2021” with Dr Inġ. Daniel Buhagiar third from right. (Photo courtesy of WindEurope)
A team comprising researchers from the University of Malta (UM) and its start-up company FLASC B.V. has recently won an award for the best scientific poster in the Renewable Hydrogen: Coupling Wind and Hydrogen thematic track in “Electric City 2021”; WindEurope’s flagship Conference and Exhibition, which was held in Copenhagen, Denmark, between 23 and 25 November 2021. The poster session entrants were reviewed on behalf of the European Academy of Wind Energy (EAWE). The hosted some 8,000 delegates and 400 exhibitors from across the whole value chain of wind energy.
The UM team’s scientific contribution entitled: “Offshore Wind-to-Hydrogen Production Plant Integrated with an Innovative Hydro-Pneumatic Energy Storage Device” was authored by Dr Jessica Settino and Dr Inġ. Robert N. Farrugia from the , by Dr Inġ. Daniel Buhagiar, CEO of FLASC B.V. in Delft, the Netherlands, and by Prof. Inġ. Tonio Sant from the Department of Mechanical Engineering at the UM’s Faculty of Engineering.
The scientific paper and supporting poster prepared for this conference resulted from an Institute for Sustainable Energy project entitled: “Wind-driven Offshore Hydrogen Production with Electricity and Flow Stabilisation - WIND4H2”, funded by Transport Malta’s Maritime Seed Award (MarSA) 2019 and administered and supported by UM’s Knowledge Transfer Office. This work was carried out between November 2019 and March 2021, and also culminated in a patent application that was filed in November 2021.
The research focused on a technical feasibility and numerical modelling on the integration the FLASC technology along with renewable energy power systems and hydrogen production plants, as a means of improving electrolyser utilisation rates. Other benefits that the FLASC technology could offer in a marine environment include the supply of seawater for the reverse osmosis/demineralisation stages of the hydrogen production process and the reduction of cooling loads for the compression and storage of the hydrogen product.
Further development of the FLASC technology is underway at UM through various research projects, including Multiple Use of Space for Island Clean Autonomy – , an H2020 project funded by the European Commission, FLASC Optima, funded through the University Research Excellence Award, and SEA2F, funded through the Research Excellence Programme of the Malta Council for Science and Technology.
