The Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU) & SINTEF

Although one of Europe’s smallest countries in terms of number of inhabitants, Norway is one of the world’s largest energy exporters. This is reflected in the skills and expertise established in the Norwegian educational and research system.

The Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU) and its research partner SINTEF, the largest independent research organisation in Scandinavia, have created one of Europe’s largest educational and research centres in the field of green energy solutions. These two institutions host one of the largest groups of scientists, laboratories and students working on clean energy in Scandinavia.

Mimmi Throne-Holst works on bioethanol produced from timber. She is one of several SINTEF/NTNU scientists who have dedicated their professional lives to clean energy research Photo: Thor Nielsen/SINTEF Media

We work in an integrated manner from basic research and education to applied research and development, the latter in close cooperation with industry. Our industrial partnerships encompass national and international energy providers, vendors, manufacturers and engineering companies.

New solutions

Together we are developing new solutions for:

• Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS): We were among the first who conceived the entire idea of fossil-fuelled power plants with integrated CCS facilities, and Norway is the first country in the world to have implemented CCS in an offshore environment,

• Energy generation from renewable sources: We conduct cutting- edge research on solar energy, wind power, hydropower, bioenergy and wave power,

• Efficient and sustainable generation, transport and end-user utilisation of energy, including oil and gas.

As far back as 1986 SINTEF launched the idea of fossil-fuelled gas power plants with integrated CCS facilities on the Norwegian continental shelf. SINTEF and NTNU have since moved steadily along this track to become the largest contributor to the European Union’s (EU) Sixth Framework Programme for research in the field of CCS, and the current Seventh Framework Programme. SINTEF is now about to lead the EU’s latest research projects on CCS.

Norway is the home of the world’s largest manufacturer of solargrade silicon and of silicon wafers for use in solar cells. NTNU and SINTEF cooperate closely with the growing solar energy industry and do research and development in all segments of this sector’s value chain. In order to help to overcome the present global shortage of solargrade silicon, we have developed a new process path for quartz destined to be turned into solar cells. This route will produce large quantities of solargrade silicon at a much lower price than today’s standard method.

Offshore floating wind-power generation is a recent focus of research. We are collaborating with the world’s largest offshore oil company, Norway’s StatoilHydro, which has decided to build the world’s first fullscale floating wind turbine, HyWind.

StatoilHydro has developed HyWind based on the floating concrete structures familiar from North Sea oil installations to exploit the wind where it is strongest and most consistent — far out at sea. The unique Ocean Basin at SINTEF/NTNU is being used in the development of this concept.

We are also a partner in a deep-sea offshore wind turbine research programme funded by the Research Council of Norway and Norwegian industry. One of our aims is to improve design tools for offshore wind energy concepts.

In this pilot laboratory plant in Trondheim SINTEF and NTNU are doing research on chemicals that can capture CO2 from fossil fuel power plant emissions. Photo: Thor Nielsen/SINTEF Media

Cooler cars

The air-conditioning unit in your car is full of chemicals that are capable of damaging the climate when they leak out of the system. This is not a sustainable situation, so we have replaced the chemicals with one of Nature’s own materials, without increasing fuel consumption. We use CO2, but this way of using CO2 does not have a greenhouse effect, because it is “borrowed” from industrial flue gases that would otherwise have been discharged into the atmosphere.

Our results were first industrialised by the Norwegian company Norsk Hydro, and were later adopted for heat pump purposes by Denso, a leading supplier of advanced automotive technology. Since then they have also sparked a great deal of interest in the automotive industry.

Our CO2 technology is a hit in the Japanese housing market, where it is used in heat pumps to heat tap-water and indoor air at a low energy cost and has already been installed in one million Japanese homes. As a further result of our pioneering work, Coca Cola has announced that it intends to use CO2 technology in its point-of-sale chilling units all over the world.

At SINTEF and NTNU we are delighted to see that we have created marketable results that could help the world to become greener.

W: www.sintef.com
W: www.ntnu.no