FLUITERM PROJECT SUMMARY
Today, EU member states are concentrating their efforts on changing the economic model to link economic progress to care for the environment, at a time when climate change is undeniable.
Two of the largest energy consuming sectors in the EU are Construction, responsible for 40% of consumption, and Industrial, responsible for 31%.
Aware of the need to reduce the energy consumption of buildings, Public Administrations started to take measures, one of the latest in Spain being the modification of the Technical Building Code (CTE), whose changes came into force for all public buildings on 31 December 2018 and for the rest of the constructions will be applicable on 31 December 2020.
The modification of the CTE includes a renewed Basic Document on Energy Saving (DB-HE) that forces to change some concepts in construction in order to achieve the efficiency and saving standards currently demanded at European level, also revising the requirements for new and existing buildings to reduce their energy consumption, increase the quality of the building in general and its installations, and incorporate renewable energies to reduce CO2 emissions.
These changes in energy requirements have a profound impact on the construction sector, which is forced to produce materials with better thermal properties without compromising mechanical properties, and on the industrial sector, which has numerous energy transfer processes to optimise.
The key parameters in the characterisation of a material, which are becoming increasingly important, are thermal conductivity and heat capacity, which should be of greater or lesser value depending on the application.
The FLUITERM project, in which the Construction Technology Centre and the Metal Technology Centre are participating, aims to develop and validate a new method for measuring thermal conductivity to determine this parameter in fluid, viscous or granular materials using equipment designed for solid materials, a field that is currently little explored and whose potential is high as it allows manufacturers to develop multiple efficient materials in the Region of Murcia.
This project is financed through a grant from the Instituto de Fomento de la Región de Murcia aimed at the Technological Centres of the Region of Murcia, Modality 1: R&D Projects, co-financed by 80% by the ERDF global grant.
