MaREI researchers at the University of Galway secure funding for air quality and offshore wind projects

Jurgita Ovadnevaite has been awarded over €1m (€1,205,850.25) for her project ‘Fingerprinting Climate Change And Air Pollutant Culprits (Epic-Air)’.

Atmospheric aerosol particles contribute to over 8 million premature deaths per year globally due to their important role in Climate Change and Air Quality. It is, therefore, crucial to understand sources of these particles as well as to assess their impacts on human health and climate. Our project will deploy a sophisticated online instrumentation and develop new methods to allow the concurrent assessment of particle health and climate impacts. Moreover, the project will use models to evaluate how these toxic particles affect climate change and, in turn, how the climate change impacts the properties of the particles.

Sean Leen has been awarded over €1m (€1,289,370.50) for his project ‘Tailored Manufacturing For Safe, Sustainable Offshore Wind Turbine Support Structure Materials (Transform)’.

This project proposes to use a combination of laboratory testing and computer modelling to improve manufacturing processes for high temperature rolling and welding of steels for more sustainable, safe design of support structures for larger offshore wind turbines. Computer models will be developed to determine the effect of the rolling and welding processes on throughthickness non-uniformity of mechanical properties, especially cracking due to fatigue. The models will be verified by experimental testing. Digital tools will be developed using these models and applied to design case studies for fixed and floating offshore win

Also among the successful recipients was MaREI’s Dr Barry Hayes from University College Cork for his project “Autonomous Open Energy Communities: A New Paradigm For Power Grid Operations (AUTONOMY)”.