The Energy Research Center (ERC) at Technical university of Ostrava is a specialized workplace dealing with research and development (R&D) activities primarily in the field of energy. Since 2002 ERC has been a separate university institute and has been involved in several dozen domestic and international projects in collaboration with other universities and companies. One of the principles of ERC’s functioning is the systematic building of partnerships with enterprises and the conduct of research activities for the needs of industrial practice, which is also positively reflected in the number and quality of R&D results.
The main topics are the improvement of energy transformation processes, the reduction of negative impacts of combustion of solid fuels on the environment, the use of secondary and waste sources of energy for the electricity production, ORC technology, the use of renewable energy sources, indentification of risks related to the production and use of alternative fuels. The new area is hydrogen energy.
Part of ERC is an accredited testing laboratory for measuring heat’n‘technical quantities and emission of pollutants. This workplace has also an authorization of the Ministry of the Environment of the Czech Republic for the measurements of pollutant emissions and a credentials for staff training in the field of emission measurements at all qualification levels. It is also a designated workplace for notified activities.
ERC is still the only accredited laboratory in CZ to carry out continuous measuremen of ammonia concentration and gaseous mercury phase in waste gas from combustion sources.
ERC also provides complete projection activities in energy, processes energy audits and studies (accreditation), performs monitoring of renewable energy sources and energy management.
R&D and cooperation with industry can be sorted out in this areas:
Improvement of technical level of combustion devices
- Investigation of a characteristics of combustion processes
- Increase of energy transformation and equipment efficiency
- Reduction of negative impacts of solid fuel combustion on the living environment
Use of alternative fuels, RES and waste energy
- Characterization and use of solid alternative fuels (SAF)
- R&D equipments for use of SAF
- Use of biomass for cogeneration, photovoltaic production of electric energy
- Production of liquid 2nd-generation biofuels by the Fischer-Tropsch synthesis
Safety in power engineering and industry
- Identification of risks related to the use of alternative fuels
- Modeling tools for explosions of fuel-air mixtures
- Analysis and experimental verification of limits of flammability and explosiveness, determination of explosion parameters
- Problematics of nanoparticles
Hydrogen energy
- The issues of fuel cells
- Operational characteristics of hydrogen production due to RES
- Storage and reuse of hydrogen
- Comprehensive hydrogen infrastructure for homes and transport
- Energy management of hydrogen storage and utilization for network management
Cooperation with industrial partners is oriented on:
- elaboration of energy studies (TES), energy audits (EA), energy assessment (EA) and building energy use intensity certificates (EUI),
- energy monitoring and optimization (EnergoGuard),
- monitoring of renewable resources (SunnyGuard),
- design engineering in energy,
- safety of fuels and technologies,
- testing of boilers,
- consulting and implementation of ČSN EN ISO 50 001.