Project

Supported by DHRTC-DTU via Smart Water Flooding Flagship Programme. Two PhD positions. The objective of the SWTS is to develop a smart water management system that addresses both optimal operational performance and process development/design, by employing the advanced control and big data analytics technologies. This work will focus on innovative analysis, design and development of both Produced Water Treatment (PWT) and Injection Water Treatment (IWT) for offshore enhanced oil recovery using advanced water-flooding technology.

Accelerating the digital innovation in the PtX energy sector and its related sectors requires considering all stakeholders in the development of digital ecosystem solutions for efficient sector coupling in PtX value chains.
The project will investigate the potential and possibilities of purchasing electricity from large-scale offshore wind and energy islands for use in a regional ecosystem with sector coupling solutions, PtX production and infrastructure. The project will build knowledge, uncover commercial opportunities and screen for business potential and skills needed to build and run the ecosystem.

This project will develop an innovative method to attract and trap heavy metals in sea water and marine sediments on a cathode metal “sponge”, using electrochemical separation and precipitation of heavy metal ions, allowing effective removal from the marine environment. For this purpose, different 3D metal cathodes “sponges” will be printed out and tested for optimization of removal capacity, surface area and material use. We will measure water and sediments heavy metal concentrations before and after the test, to evaluate efficiency of the specific cathode “metal sponge”.

Globally, over 250 million barrels of water are produced daily from the oil and gas fields, and more than 40% of the produced water is discharged into the environment. As a consequence, a highly focused area for the Danish North-Sea oil field operators, as well as the authorities and public, is the content of oil in the produced water discharged to sea.

This project is to propose a software-based innovative Produced Water Treatment (PWT) solution by using the advanced plant-wide control methodology. This will be achieved through integration of an advanced Multiple Input and Multiple Output (MIMO) anti-slug control, which is developed based on a large process scope covering from the production wells over the 1st-stage inlet separators to the produced water treatment systems, where these systems are equipped with multiple manipulators and transmitters, with a coordinated separator (water) level control and pressure control of hydrocyclones, which are developed in an optimal cooperative manner.

The achieved solution will promote a completely new generation of PWT system in terms of better environmental protection, along with significantly improved production and reduced cost-vs-production ratio.

The development of a new control system for marine antennas can give sailors and their contacts on land less hassle with bad connections and low data speeds. A Danish patented antenna system will be improved with ideas for control and stabilization at Aalborg University. The results will put the company in Hobro in front on a developing maritime market.

This project enables Danish participation in IEA Wind Task 44: Farm Flow Control. The focus is on control strategies to mitigate wake effects in wind farms. The purpose of IEA Wind Task 44 is to coordinate international research in the field of wind field control inside wind farms. The technology used for this task covers a wide range, but focuses primarily on control algorithms and strategies and how they are transferred to real-world operational improvements.

The intention is to bring together ongoing research results as well as best industry practice, create an overview of control strategies and algorithms and investigate how uncertainties affect the performance and potential for implementation of wind farm control.
The result is guidance for the wind industry and researchers on the current control algorithms, requirements, barriers to adoption, future directions and expected benefits of wind farm control.

A common challenge for structures submerged in water, such as offshore oil and gas platforms and wind turbine foundations, is marine fouling. The fouling consists of, for example, mussels and sea grass, which settle permanently on the structure and thereby increase both the volume and roughness of the material. This causes increased stress and fatigue of the structure, primarily due to increased wave loads and the weight of the fouling. Furthermore, the fouling complicates inspections of the structure, which are important for documenting the durability of the material. These disadvantages are reduced by cleaning the fouling off at regular intervals. Alternatively, the structure is oversized in the design phase to overcome the loads from marine fouling. Both methods are expensive for the production and/or operation of the structures and thus for energy production. In this project, two major players within Denmark's strengths, oil and gas (Total E&P) and wind (Siemens Gamesa), have joined forces to support the development of an improved concept for inspecting and combating marine fouling. The concept is based on improved robotic technology, which will raise the level of automation, as well as a compact setup that makes the operation independent of large environmentally polluting vessels, which the clean-up campaigns today depend on. The solution will finally be tested in the North Sea and will raise the technology from TRL 4 to TRL 7.

In Europe, coastal areas are great zones of settlement and play a vital role in the wealth of many nations. Over the past 50 years, the population living in European coastal municipalities has more than doubled and in 2001, it reached 70 million inhabitants. The total value of economic assets located within 500 meters of the European coastline was estimated at between € 500 and 1,000 billion in 2000. [THESEUS, 2010]

This PhD stipend is affiliated with the 4 year research project THESEUS (“Innovative technologies for safer European coasts in a changing climate”) funded by the European Commission (6.5 million Euro). The objective of the project is to study the application of innovative combined coastal mitigation and adaptation technologies generally aiming at delivering a safe (or low-risk) coast for human use/development and healthy coastal habitats as sea levels rise and climate changes (and the European economy continues to grow). The general aim of this PhD project is to develop and evaluate innovative methods for mitigation of flooding and coastal erosion hazard in the context of increasing storminess and sea level rise.

The PhD project will be related mainly to experimental testing of various innovative methods for improving the safety of European coasts in a changing climate. These methods will among others be upgrade of existing defences (dikes, breakwaters etc.) and reduction of wave energy at the coasts by utilization of wave energy converters placed offshore. Concerning the use of wave energy converters for coastal protection, an additional numerical study will be performed, where the numerical model is calibrated and validated against the experimental test-data. Thereby, it is possible to apply the evaluated wave energy converters at any shoreline. Moreover, the consequence of overtopping waves on dikes will be investigated in oblique- and short-crested waves which can be used to more realistically evaluate the consequence of sea water level rise.

Wavepiston has developed a unique, groundbreaking wave energy technology that can deliver both energy and desalinated water, but costs are still not competitive. The consortium of Wavepiston, Technical University of Denmark and Aalborg University, together with key suppliers in the value chain, will redesign key subcomponents of the Wavepiston technology to reduce weight and increase durability to reduce CAPEX and OPEX, and increase efficiency of the energy conversion for higher annual energy production. This will ensure a competitive LCOE right after the finalization of the project.

Blue Mathematics at AAU is a new teaching and research initiative supported by Orient's Fond. The current funding is for a six-year period (2024-2029). The leadership of the project is ensured by Professor Morten Willatzen and Professor Horia Cornean. There are also two Orient's Fond Chair Associate Professors: Fynn Aschmoneit and Matteo Bonini.

At this stage, our main efforts are directed towards building the foundation for new activities. The topics will mainly deal with real life problems coming from Engineering Mathematics in a broad sense, involving areas such as Fluid Dynamics, Optimization, Spatial Statistics, Cryptography, Coding Theory and Secure Communication, all applied to the maritime sector. More details to follow.