The Malta Independent on Sunday
University of Malta and AIM Enterprises address the Sustainability of Industrial Compressed Air Systems
The University of Malta and AIM Enterprises Ltd recently kicked off a €320,000 three-year research project funded by the R&I Fusion – Technology Development Programme of the Malta Council for Science and Technology to address the sustainability of industrial compressed air systems. Such systems are heavily used particularly in automation systems, however, they suffer from a low energy efficiency of around 10-20%. Additionally, leakages and faults, which amount to around 30% of the total compressed air use are typically only maintained annually or following noteworthy system failures.
The Malta Low Carbon Development Strategy, recently published by the Government of Malta, identifies compressed air systems as one of the main energy consuming industrial processes in Malta. It is estimated that the local industry wastes around 16,000 MWh/yr worth of electricity to compensate for pneumatic leakages. This inefficiency annually costs up to €2m and generates 6,000 tonnes of greenhouse gas emissions. For comparison purposes, it takes around 32,000 photovoltaic panels (300Wp each), occupying around 10 football pitches, to offset that annual electricity consumption
and carbon footprint in Malta.
The project entitled Development and Analysis of an IndustRy 4.0 System to Autonomously ImproVE the Sustainability of Pneumatics (Air Save), aims to develop, produce, test and commercialise a smart system which improves the sustainability and hence the competitiveness of manufacturing firms. The Air Save system shall continuously
monitor the environmental and financial performance of pneumatic systems. To do so it uses Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) technologies to identify, distinguish and classify inefficiency sources in real-time.
Dr Ing. Paul Refalo, Air Save project leader and senior lecturer at the Department of Industrial and Manufacturing Engineering of the University of
Malta, said that “such a project brings academia and industry together to address Sustainable Development Goals and focus on environmental and financial concerns in manufacturing”. Dr Ing. Emmanuel Francalanza from the same department and Dr Peter Xuereb from the Department of Computer Information Systems, shall be collaborating from Digital Manufacturing, IoT and Computer Systems perspectives.
“It is our pleasure, to be collaborating once again with the University of Malta, in such an important area both for us, and for the local and international industry,” said Angelo Mifsud, CEO of AIM Enterprises Ltd. Ylenia Grech Mifsud, COO at AIM, continues to say that “this project builds on years of preliminary research and collaboration between both institutions and we are very glad to see a concept moving forward from the labs to real industrial environments”.
This project also gives the opportunity to local students to pursue their studies at doctoral level. Research Support Officers Massimo Borg and Jasmine Mallia, have also embarked on their PhD studies related to the smart and sustainable systems they are developing in the project.
Olaf Zahra (chief officer Technology and Sustainability at Toly Products), Ing. Anthony Caruana (Manufacturing Engineering manager) and Ing. Tiziano Petrosino (Plant Facilities director at STMicroelectronics), form part of the Industrial Advisory Board of the project.
One can follow project updates on social media (Facebook and LinkedIn) and through the project website www.airsave.mt