Under the auspices of Prof. Dr. Ayman Mohamed Ibrahim, President of Port Said University, Prof. Dr. Rawya Yahya Rizk, Vice President for Postgraduate Studies and Research, and Prof. Dr. Hassan Mohamed Hassan, Dean of the Faculty of Engineering, Port Said University have successfully hosted a joint workshop with the University of Sheffield on the 28th of Feb 2022. The workshop has been organized to facilitated both online and in-person participation. The workshop is part of the activities of the project entitled “Novel wind-powered energy-efficient reverse osmosis plants for sustainable water desalination in rural coastal areas” which is sponsored by the Science and Technology Development Fund (STDF) and the British Council (BC). The joint workshop is entitled “BC-STDF EGYPT-UK Introduction to Sustainability Workshop” and its in-person activity is promoted as the “International Workshop for Energy and Water Research at Port Said University (IWEWR-PSU)”.
Dr Karen Finnely from the University of Sheffield (UoS) gave an introduction to the research activities conducted at the Translational Energy Research Centre (TERC), which is located in Sheffield and the research grant generated. The research themes include hydrogen, carbon capture, biomass, sustainable aviation fuels research, and more.
Subsequently, Prof Lin Ma from the Wind Energy Group (UoS) briefed the audience on the ever-increasing demand for renewable energy and the predicted increase in installed capacity for Vertical Axis Wind Turbine (VAWT) annually by 15%. The research topics of his group include aerodynamic, optimisation, techno-economic analysis, and experimental fluid mechanics
Prof Islam Amin, who is from Port Said University (PSU), delivered a talk on “Non-conventional Water and Energy Resources from Marine Industry Perspectives”. And Prof Mohamed Bassyouni (PSU) briefed the audience on current and emerging membrane technology and how it is utilised for the desalination process to provide clean usable water for the region. In the second half of the session, Dr Jee Loong Hee (UoS) gave a talk on design and computational investigations of inertial particle separators for usage in commercial aerospace applications where the research was completed in his previous institution. The talk covered design guidelines for particle separators, Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) best practices used to characterise the flow and assess the performance and finally, the experimental test facility used for prototype analysis. This was followed by a talk by Mr. Khalid M Alzahran, a PhD candidate at UoS. The audience was briefed with various interesting concepts of VAWT blade design where it is currently being studied for efficiency improvement, most notably C-Shape wind turbine for self-starting. The seventh talk is provided by Dr Ahmed Mouad from EGYPT Holding Company for Water & Wastewater. The audience was briefed on the initiatives taken in energy-saving and water treatment processes within the region. Finally, Dr Ahmed Abdelkader (PSU) provided a talk on the hybrid foundation system for wind turbines to be used offshore. The proposed ‘hybrid’ foundation combines both concrete and steel structure to enable greater cost saving compared to the conventional support structure.
The three-hour thirty minutes workshop has greatly benefitted the attendees, including academics from Port Said University, the University of Sheffield, British University in Egypt, experts from the Holding Company for Water & Wastewater, and experts from the Arab Organization for Industrialization, in addition to several industry experts, and students across from Egypt and UK. In total, 69 people attended the workshop where 13 are females and 56 are males. With more initiative in the future, it is possible to further improve diversity and inclusivity.
