CETRI group of Agriculture & Energy (A&E) is composed from Agriculturalists, SW/HW Engineers, as well as Experts, across various fields with long experience in Research, Innovation, and Development. Energy use and supply is of fundamental importance to society, agriculture and forestry, making the greatest impact on the environment of any human activity – a result of the large scale and pervasive nature of energy related activities. Although agriculture & energy concerns were originally local in character – for example, problems associated with extraction, transport or noxious emissions – they have now widened to cover regional and global issues such as acid rain and the greenhouse effect. Such problems have now become major political issues and the subject of international debate and regulation. CETRI group of A&E is capable of modelling, designing and development of innovative frameworks according to its clientele needs (public/private sector), as well as to define the necessary requirements for off the self, holistic product solutions.
In the years to come, energy systems worldwide will experience significant changes mainly due to renewable energy integration and increasing distributed generation with application in agriculture, forestry and other sectors. The aim of the Sustainable Energy Planning and Intelligent Energy Systems (SEPIES) research group is to link sustainable energy planning with the operation for a more intelligent, flexible, and rational energy system and drive industry not only to the integrated project design and implementation but also to the smart and efficient use of energy resources.
The CETRI SEPIES research group consists of highly qualified professionals with pioneering research work in the field. Research within the group has been focusing mainly in the following areas:
- Environmental Remediation Nanotechnologies
- Data-driven farming solutions
- Spatial Planning, Land Use and Built Environment
- Spatial Planning and Detailed Project Design
- Project Implementation/Project Construction
- Intelligent Energy Systems
- Energy Economics, and Optimization
- Demand Side Management Strategies
- Energy Scheduling & Renewable Energy Sources Optimal Dispatch
- Demand based Generation – Prosumers
Cetri has research capacity and provides solutions offering SW applications for Wind and Solar power prediction, optimal operation and dispatch, price forecasting, electricity and heat load prediction. One of the main scientific and business goals of the SEPIES group is to lay the ground by creating links with European electricity, heating and cooling sector with the energy sector of Middle East.
Smart farming data driven solutions
In the past decade, volume of data has grown at an exponential rate, so is the use of technology in agriculture domain. Globally, farmers are using drones, machines, data analytics to improve yield of their farm lands. CETRI offers a wide range of tools and advice to support farmers with their agronomy decisions and product use, helping them to create more sustainable food sources by mitigating energy expenses in a very tight margin industry and sustain their operational expenses. CETRI integrates sensor data and satellite imagery to translate data into actionable information for agribusinesses. It deploys the soil sensors on ground, uses satellites data, collects weather data, calculates ET and thereby build a model to provide agronomists and farmers with timely and large-scale diagnostics on crop issues, thus allowing farmers to substantially improve yield efficiency and reduce their usage of fertilisers and chemicals.
Services offered:
- State-of-the-Art Deep Learning image recognition techniques for precision farming (pest detection, soil nutrition, crop watering, and crop maturity).
- Extreme scale analytics for big data and knowledge extraction from multiple data streams (IoTs, Smart Sensors, Aerial Imagery).
- Deployment of forecasting AI/ML models for weather prediction, soil nutritional needs, energy demand, and watering.
- Decision support systems for optimal resources planning.
- Early warning systems, monitoring, KPIs design, automated reporting systems.
Life Cycle Assessment services
Nowadays, the mankind is increasingly facing the impacts of climate change and resource depletion. Therefore, it is of outmost importance to monitor all the activities or processes, during the lifetime of a product which result in environmental impacts due to consumption of resources and emissions of substances into the natural environment. To meet this goal, CETRI has developed expertise on the conduction of Life Cycle Assessment studies, including: Life Cycle Impact Assessment (LCIA), Life Cycle Cost Assessment (LCCA), Life Cycle Social Assessment (LCSA) and Cost-Benefit Analysis (CBA). The aforementioned analyses measure the impact a product or service has on the world around it and facilitate decision making towards a more sustainable future. LCA is applicable for:
– Single products
– Buildings (materials, heating & fresh water processes)
– Industrial applications (covering manufacturing facilities, agricultural sites, farming)
– Energy production units (covering renewables and conventional power units)
– Supply chains
Water Treatment
Nowadays, despite the progress that has been achieved in water treatment technologies, the environmental health of the vast majority of Europe’s water bodies suffers, unable to meet the EU’s ecological status target under the EU Water Framework Directive. CETRI targets in the utilization of advanced technologies which are able to face the most challenging conditions. CETRI promotes the commercialization of technological advances with remediation ability and potential to extent to real (large-scale) field environmental scenarios. Moreover, CETRI has long term business collaboration with the wastewater sector offering consulting services towards the penetration of nanotechnologies into the conventional treatment methods
Energy Building monitoring
Governments worldwide have committed to reduce the environmental impacts of built environment, especially in relation to energy consumption and carbon emissions. CETRI is addressing the aforementioned need of research community and building market by providing highly innovative services and products which aim to monitor and reduce energy consumption. In more details the following services and products are provided
- Development of sensors for monitoring building performance
- Development of mathematical models for data analysis
- Simulation modelling of energy performance in buildings
- Development of automated data analysis tools in building energy management
Intelligent Sensors
A smart sensor, according to generally accepted industry definitions, combines a sensing element, analog interface circuit, an analog-to-digital converter (ADC), and a bus interface, all in one housing. Making the grade against the newest generation of smart sensors, however, means that additional functionality must be included, such as self-testing, self-identification, self-validation, or self-adaptation. Of particular interest and importance of CETRI’s group are such smart sensor capabilities as self-calibration and self-diagnosis, the ability to use signal processing, and multi-sensing capabilities. Increasingly, highly integrated smart sensors perform logic functions, rely on two-way communications, adjust for changes in their environment, and make decisions. Compared with their not-too-distant standard sensor cousins, smart sensors can now rely on self-calibration and built-in self-test — two areas that the CETRI’s group engineers have long truck of record of producing innovative solutions in a number of scenarios
Software Agents
The next wave of technological innovation must integrate linked organizations and multiple application platforms. Developers must construct unified information management systems that use the World Wide Web and advanced software technologies. Software agents, one of the most exciting new developments in computer software technology, can be used to quickly and easily build integrated enterprise systems. The idea of having a software agent that can perform complex tasks on our behalf is intuitively appealing. The main aim of the CETRI’s group is to use multiple software agents that communicate and cooperate with each other to solve complex problems and implement complex systems. Software agents provide a powerful new method for implementing these next-generation information systems.
Wireless Sensor Networks
Wireless sensor network (WSN) refers to a group of spatially dispersed and dedicated sensors for monitoring and recording the physical conditions of the environment and organizing the collected data at a central location. WSNs measure environmental conditions like temperature, sound, pollution levels, humidity, wind speed and direction, pressure, etc. WSNs were initially designed to facilitate military operations but its application has since been extended to health, traffic, and many other consumer and industrial areas. A WSN consists of anywhere from a few hundreds to thousands of sensor nodes. This group of CETRI has the ability to model, design and develop as well as to deploy a flexible number sensor nodes with the use of an innovative intelligent middleware providing to each node the characteristics of perception, cognition and control. Furthermore, CETRIs Wireless Sensor Networks (WSN) Group has acquired great experience in the design and analysis of WSN, through the successful implementation of numerous R&D projects. The approach used is application-specific for several industries, such as Manufacturing, Maritime, Oil & Gas, Mining, Construction, etc. More specifically, the WSN Group’s expertise can address issues related to:
- Hardware design
- Embedded programming
- Energy consumption
- Network communication analysis
- Network topology design and analysis
- Modeling and simulation
Advanced materials
The group of CETRI has experience in synthesis and developing of semiconducting materials implemented in a wide range of applications including solar cells (solid state and thin film solar cells) and opto-electronic devices (light emitting diodes (LED), solid-state laser diodes). In particular, research topics of the group are:
- Synthesis of binary and ternary II-VI semiconducting compound thin films by electrochemical (constant and pulse current) deposition, chemical deposition, or hybrid techniques. The produced films in single and multiple layer configurations are evaluated as photovoltaic device components and also as electrodes in photoelectrochemical cell and photocatalytic applications.
- Electrochemistry of materials and crystal growth: investigation of soft (electro) chemical methods intended to use for the controlled preparation and characterization of specific material micro-structures, as well as the manufacture of heterostructures (metal ̶ semiconductor, semiconductor ̶ semiconductor, semiconductor ̶ liquid junctions) featuring adjusted properties for technological applications.
- Production of ordered semiconducting metal oxide nanoporous arrays and investigation of their optical sensitization effects in photoelectrochemical cells (e.g. semiconductor sensitized TiO2).
- Characterization of materials by solid state methods, optical and (photo) electrochemistry techniques.
- Construction of photovoltaic devices (photoelectrochemical cells)
- Synthesis and modification of advanced nanocomposites for environmental remediation especially tailored for water treatment. Tuning of surface properties and selectivity towards toxic compounds removal.
Marine pollution
Environment & Marine pollution department is one of the strongest area of research in CETRI Center. Particularly, the research group has high expertise and experience in identification and treatment of marine, soil and air pollution.
Thirty-eight per cent of the world’s population live within a narrow fringe of coastal land, only 7.6 per cent of the Earth’s total land area (unep 2006) and largely depend on coastal resources for their livelihoods. As a result, coastal and marine ecosystems are rapidly deteriorating because of human pressure, almost 80 per cent of which originate on land.
CETRI is a research center which is very sensitized in environmental pollution issues especially in maritime enviroments. CETRI provides several testing facilities to detect potential marine pollution. The technical staff working in CETRI has high expertise and knowledge in environmental pollution, prevention and characterization. CETRI contains technical equipment (LC-TQ MS, LC-DAD, LC-QTOF MS and UPLC-QTOF MS ) to implement several environmental tests according to OECD 2010 guideline such as 108, 201, 308 etc.
Marine pollution occurs when harmful, or potentially harmful effects, can result from the entry into the ocean of chemicals, particles, industrial, agricultural and residential waste, noise, or the spread of invasive organisms. Many potentially toxic chemicals adhere to tiny particles which are then taken up by plankton and benthos animals, most of which are either deposit or filter feeders. In this way, the toxins are concentrated upward within ocean food chains. Many particles combine chemically in a manner highly depletive of oxygen, causing estuaries to become anoxic. When pesticides are incorporated into the marine ecosystem, they quickly become absorbed into marine food webs. Once in the food webs, these pesticides can cause mutations, as well as diseases, which can be harmful to humans as well as the entire food web. Toxic metals can also be introduced into marine food webs. These can cause a change to tissue matter, biochemistry, behavior, reproduction, and suppress growth in marine life. In this way, marine toxins can be transferred to land animals, and appear later in meat and dairy products. The activities of this group could also be divided in two main sectorial parts of the group are the environmental monitoring of water and soil quality and contamination and waste water treatment, reuse and recycling. At present, analytics and environmental monitoring are among the most dynamically developing branches of chemical analysis. The pursuit of getting the complex information on environmental quality leads to developing new methods and analytical techniques
Soil contamination
Soil contamination occurs when substances are added to soil, causing an increase in pollutant concentrations above background or reference levels. Contamination can come from diffuse (e.g. atmospheric deposition, waste to land) or point sources (spills) and may be created by a large number of activities. The concern over soil contamination stems primarily from health risks, from direct contact with the contaminated soil, vapors from the contaminants, and from secondary contamination of water supplies within and underlying the soil. The problem becomes greater considering how easily soil contamination can occur. There are two types of soil contamination: a) heavy metal pollution and b) organic compounds (organic solvents and non-aqueous phase liquids). Studies have shown that many organic chemicals form persistent and permanently bound residues in soils and sediments that play an important role in soil and sediment detoxification processes and have a long-term compound partitioning behavior. Our department has high expertise in prevention, characterization and treatment of soil pollution.
Air Pollution
Air pollution involves the introduction of chemicals, particulates or biological materials in the atmosphere resulting to discomfort, disease or death to humans, damage other living organisms or environment. Pollutants can be in the form of solid particles, liquid droplets or gases. In addition, they may be natural or man-made. Air pollution is a significant risk factor for multiple health conditions including respiratory infections, heart disease and lung cancer according to WHO. Our research team has high expertise in the characterization of air pollution, air pollution control technologies and treatment techniques. Moreover, our team has developed industrial simulation models for industrial gas pollution cases.
Environmental Monitoring
Two main activities of the group are the environmental monitoring of water and soil quality and contamination and waste water treatment, reuse and recycling. At present, analytics and environmental monitoring are among the most dynamically developing branches of chemical analysis. The pursuit of getting the complex information on environmental quality leads to developing new methods and analytical techniques.