Project Listing

Carbon dioxide capture, storage and conversion to different chemicals is a topic of high interest due to the great number of emissions of this gas in energy production. The adsorption and conversion of CO2 by the action of different heterogeneous catalysts, photocatalysts and/or electrocatalysts may be an alternative solution to lower CO2 emissions coming from the energy generation cycle. The current transformations of CO2 by catalytic reactions are usually leading to C1-chemicals such as methanol, formaldehyde or formic acid among others, however, much less has been developed for the conversion to other valuable chemicals such as hydrocarbons (ethylene or propylene) or different oxygenated products (ethanol or propanol) of interest for the alcohol industry. This project will be focused on the synthesis and characterization of multifunctional hybrid nanomaterials decorated with chemical and enzymatic catalytic sites for CO2 adsorption and cascade chemo-enzymatic transformation to different chemicals of interest for the industry

Computer Vision algorithms are a key element in order to make smart cities, transportation and mobility a reality. Our research interest are in Computer Vision in general and in efficient (low computational resources and real time) object detection and tracking in particular, with special interest in face analysis, which can applied in different problems related to smart mobility and smart cities.

Our line of research focuses on the evaluation the environmental performance of firms and economies by analysing the fluctuations of CO2 emissions and their links with economic activity. The methodological framework is based on a dynamic factor analysis to elaborate indicators of the environmental performance. We develop a CO2 emissions-GDP linkage matrix to attain useful information on the firms and economies.

Numerical Simulation of Sonoreactors (Green Technology, Sonochemistry). Acoustic cavitation can be used to enhance some industrial processes (chemistry, biomedical applications, nanotechnology, food technology, water treatment, cleaning). The propagation of an intense ultrasonic wave in a liquid leads to the formation, oscillation, growth, and collapse of bubbles. our group develops numerical tools to study the time-dependent and nonlinear interaction of ultrasound and bubble oscillations, which is a key point to enhance the efficiency of sonochemistry.

Different organic semiconducting polymer, such as poly(3,4-ethylenedioxythiophene): poly(styrenesulfonate) (PEDOT:PSS); poly(3-hexylthiophene) (P3HT) or, more recently, Poly(triarylamine) (PTAA) exhibit high transparency and relatively high hole mobility, making it an attractive hole-transport material in optoelectronic applications such as organic light emitting diodes and perovskite photovoltaic devices. Notably, PTAA was used as the hole transport layer in the world-record, 22.1% efficiency perovskite solar cell. Its principal advantages compared to other traditional semiconducting polymers are its stability in air, resistance to degradation by exposure to UV light or moisture, and ability to be annealed at low temperatures, making it amenable to high-throughput roll-to-roll processing.

This proposal consists on the manufacture of multifunctional coatings, based on polymer doped with nanofillers, in order to develop ADIS system (Anti-icing and de-icing systems). The system is based on the self-heating due to Joule´s effect of the electrical conductor coating reinforced with graphitic nanofillers. This project could solve this problem using the same installed wind blades, applying a maintenance operation consisted on the application of a new coating

Ours is a connected world. Technological (power, communications and transportation) networks play a leading role in our daily lives. To cope with the technological challenges posed by the modern society, contemporary networked systems have became more flexible, involved and autonomous. Power and transportation networks are now equipped with batteries and have access to renewable sources of energy. This evolution has opened the door to more energy efficient operation schemes and to better user’s experience. However, it has also made the design, management and operation of the networks more difficult. Successful execution of those tasks requires a detailed modeling and analysis of the network and its terminals.

Efficient planning of energy storage Energy storage is a major challenge in the long term, but also in the medium and short term. Nowadays, a lot of research is being carried out regarding energy storage from the point of view of materials science, physics, and engineering. However, from the point of view of decision support […]

Our main research lines comprise coordination mechanisms and services for the efficient use of shared limited resources. We frequently apply them to environments with autonomous stakeholders where, besides efficiency, different types of fairness and “social welfare” as well as all sorts of “security” constraints need to be considered, so as to enable an effective implementation. For this purpose, we usually combine multiagent techniques from a sandbox that we call “agreement technologies” (semantic technologies, market-based mechanisms, automated negotiation and argumentation, trust and reputation, norms and organisations, …). The ultimate goal is to provide innovative new services to the user, and at the same time to reduce CO2 emissions and energy consumption.

Our main research lines comprise coordination mechanisms and services for the efficient use of shared limited resources. We frequently apply them to environments with autonomous stakeholders where, besides efficiency, different types of fairness and “social welfare” as well as all sorts of “security” constraints need to be considered, so as to enable an effective implementation. For this purpose, we usually combine multiagent techniques from a sandbox that we call “agreement technologies” (semantic technologies, market-based mechanisms, automated negotiation and argumentation, trust and reputation, norms and organisations, …). A key application area is the smart grid. We are particularly interested in mechanisms and services that work in a “bottom-up” fashion, i.e. that provide incentives for owners to offer their resource to the grid in certain situations or at certain times, while keeping them under their control at others. We envision those service-level agreements to be negotiated, executed, and controlled in a peer-to-peer fashion.