University of Genova is an academic institution with several Departments covering the main areas of science and technology, considered among the best Italian universities for quality of research.
The team involved in LIFE SUGAR is part of the Department of Mechanical, Energetic, Management and Transportation Engineering -DIME. It is the reference for all academic courses on Mechanical Engineering and the Ph.D. course on “Mechanical engineering, mathematical engineering and simulation, fluid machinery engineering”. DIME has 82 professors and 126 technical and administrative permanent staff.
An average of 30 research associates and 80 Ph.D. students are working on a year base. DIME average annual budget for research is 6 MEuro from European and national funds and national and international industries research contracts.
Average number of scientific papers in international journals is 170 and 160 presentations at international events per year.
Specific competences provided to LIFE SUGAR concern computational and experimental fluid dynamics for glass production systems. Both numerical and experimental facilities are available. Research activities on CFD models for regenerative chambers and furnace system simulation started in 2009 and have been supported by EU, Regional and industrial funding. The experimental laboratory for combustion analysis has been tailored to the experimental study of turbulent flames representative of furnace combustion. This lab is equipped with advanced measuring systems (LIF-Laser Induced Fluorescence) for the detailed measurement of the instantaneous flame front. The UNIGE team has a continuous RTD experience of more than 10 years on glass production systems.
UNIGE is part of many European projects, amongst which 19 LIFE projects can be mentioned. In 2 of them was coordinator (SUMFLOWER LIFE09 ENV/IT/000067 and ARION LIFE09 NAT/IT/000190). DIME participated to PRIMEGLASS – LIFE12 ENV/IT/001020, performing mainly CFD modelling activities.