ERC FUNDED PROJECTS

The GRINDOOR project aims at developing and implementing new materials that enable huge energy savings in buildings and improve the quality of the indoor environment. About 40% of the primary energy, and 70% of the electricity, is used in buildings, and therefore the outcome of this project can have an impact on the long-term energy demand in the EU and the World. It is a highly focused study on new nanomaterials based on some transition metal oxides, which are used for four interrelated applications related to indoor lighting and indoor air: (i) electrochromic coatings are integrated in devices and used in “smart windows” to regulate the inflow of visible light and solar energy in order to minimize air condition and create indoor comfort, (ii) thermochromic nanoparticulate coatings are used on windows to provide large temperature-dependent control of the inflow of infrared solar radiation (in stand-alone cases as well as in conjunction with electrochromics), (iii) oxide-based gas sensors are used to measure indoor air quality especially with regard to formaldehyde, and (iv) photocatalytic coatings are used for indoor air cleaning. The investigated materials have many things in common and a joint and focused study, such as the one proposed here, will generate important new knowledge that can be transferred between the various sub-projects. The new oxide materials are prepared by advanced reactive gas deposition—using unique equipment—and high-pressure reactive dc magnetron sputtering. The materials are characterized and investigated by a wide range of state-of-the-art techniques.

2 328 726 €

Start date: 2011-06-01, End date: 2016-05-31

Oxidation reactions are of fundamental importance in Nature and are key transformation in organic synthesis. There is currently a need from society to replace waste-producing expensive oxidants by environmentally benign oxidants in industrial oxidation reactions. The aim with the proposed research is to develop novel green oxidation methodology that also involves hydrogen transfer reactions. In the oxidation reactions the goal is to use molecular oxygen (air) or hydrogen peroxide as the oxidants. In the present project new catalytic oxidations via low-energy electron transfer will be developed. The catalytic reactions obtained can be used for racemization of alcohols and amines and for oxygen- and hydrogen peroxide-driven oxidations of various substrates. Examples of some reactions that will be studied are oxidative palladium-catalyzed C-C bond formation and metal-catalyzed C-H oxidation including dehydrogenation reactions with iron and ruthenium. Coupled catalytic systems where electron transfer mediators (ETMs) facilitate electron transfer from the reduced catalyst to molecular oxygen (hydrogen peroxide) will be studied. Highly efficient reoxidation systems will be designed by covalently linking two electron transfer mediators (ETMs). The intramolecular electron transfer in these hybrid ETM catalysts will significantly increase the rate of oxidation reactions. The research will lead to development of more efficient reoxidation systems based on molecular oxygen and hydrogen peroxide, as well as more versatile racemization catalysts for alcohols and amines.

1 722 000 €

Start date: 2010-01-01, End date: 2015-12-31

Modern society is critically dependent on large-scale networks for services such as energy supply, transportation and communications. The design and control of such networks is becoming increasingly complex, due to their growing size, heterogeneity and autonomy. A systematic theory and methodology for control of large-scale interconnected systems is therefore needed. In an ambitious effort towards this goal, this project will develop rigorous tools for control synthesis, adaptation and verification. Many large-scale systems exhibit properties that have not yet been systematically exploited by the control community. One such property is positive (or monotone) system dynamics. This correspond to the property that all states of a network respond in the same direction when the demand or supply is perturbed in some node. Scalable methods for control of positive systems are starting to be developed, but several fundamental questions remain: How can existing results be extended to scalable synthesis of dynamic controllers? Can results for linear positive systems be extended to nonlinear monotone ones? How about systems with resonances? The second focus area, adaptation, takes advantage of recent progress in machine learning, such as statistical concentration bounds and approximate dynamic programming. Adaptation is of fundamental importance for scalability, since high-fidelity models are very expensive to generate manually and hard to maintain. Thirdly, since systematic procedures for control synthesis generally rely on simplified models and idealized assumptions, we will also develop scalable methods to bound the effect of imperfections, such as nonlinearities, time-variations and parameter uncertainty that are not taken into account in the original design. The research will be carried out in interaction with industry studying a new concept for district heating networks. This collaboration will give access to experimental data from a full scale demonstration plant.

2 500 000 €

Start date: 2019-09-01, End date: 2024-08-31

The proposed research concerns two sets of issues. The first concerns the role of state building in the development process, and the role played by violent conflict whether internal or external to the state. In this research, we will build a sequence of theoretical models, taking a stepping stone in a basic framework where new infrastructure that expands the state s capacity to raise revenue and to support private markets is viewed as outcome of investments under uncertainty. Our objective in model building is to provide guidance for the collection of historical and contemporary data and for econometric testing, which will both be central to the project. The overall goal of this project is to bring the analysis of state capacity into the mainstream of economics, and thereby shed light on the complex interactions between state building, conflict and development. The second set of issues ultimately concerns the economics of climate change. A first subproject aims at estimating the historical effects of weather on infant mortality in Africa, using a variety of data sources: individual data based on retrospective DHS surveys, finely-gridded weather data based on so-called re-analyis with large-scale climate models, and spatial data on harvest times based on satellite data on plant growth. Exploiting the random component of historical weather fluctuation allows us to estimate causal effects on health outcomes via mechanisms like malnutrition and malaria. This initial research will serve as a pilot study, to develop a methodology for studying the weather impacts on any outcome of interest anywhere in the world. Eventually such estimates will serve to estimate the future costs of climate change.

1 489 744 €

Start date: 2010-02-01, End date: 2015-01-31