Grant: Industrial Research Chairs

The proposal is the renewal, for a 5-year period, of a NSERC chair on industrial energy efficiency in the mechanical engineering department at Université de Sherbrooke (UdeS), under the direction of the Associate Professor, Sébastien Poncet. The partners are Hydro-Québec, CanmetEnergie of Natural Resources Canada and Emerson Canada. The chair is based on the results obtained during a first mandate between 2014 and 2019. With a 1.4 M$ budget of cash contributions, this second mandate will allow the industry to exploit the full potential of these results, while providing a scientific survey at UdeS in this strategic area. The objectives are the development of efficient technologies from an energetic point of view, new knowledge and numerical tools that will help Canadian industries improving the energy efficiency of their processes and ban progressively the use of refrigerants with a high environmental impact. The chair also aims at training 19 highly qualified personnel in this area. The chair's research program covers the general theme of "Industrial Energy Efficiency" and revolves around strategic applications involving thermal systems for both heating and cooling applications: heat pumps using natural refrigerants, cold energy storage systems for the food industry and ejector-based technologies. Each of the 8 projects includes experimental and numerical studies and will lead to develop both numerical tools for design and optimization purposes but also new prototypes from the laboratory to the pilot scale.