Project description
Better lubrication for a sustainable future
Friction and wear determine the consumption of energy. Reducing them using green lubrication is the most direct route to lowering energy consumption and pollution. The EU-funded GreenTRIBOS project is developing innovative technologies to decrease friction and wear through the work of 12 early-stage researchers. These researchers will develop integrative green concepts, their functional mechanisms, and lifecycle analyses to verify their sustainability. The project will measure the performance of machinery to reduce energy consumption, resource depletion and pollutants. The researchers will become the next generation of scientists and engineers to make the changes required for a sustainable engineering future.
Objective
The world is warming and the weather is becoming increasingly unstable and extreme, and whether we like it or not, the overwhelming scientific consensus is that mankind’s use of fossil fuels is a key component in this climate change. Friction, wear and lubrication are major players in the consumption of energy, and so reducing friction and wear and using green lubrication is the most direct route to reducing energy consumption and pollution and so contributing to a better environment for us all. GreenTRIBOS takes up this very important challenge by developing innovative, but sustainable and green, technologies to decrease both friction and wear and improve lubrication. The 12 early-stage researchers (ESRs) will be working in three science-based work packages to develop integrative green concepts, their functional mechanisms, and lifecycle analyses to verify the sustainability, as well as quantifying the tribological performance to reduce energy consumption, resource depletion and polluting emissions. In the overarching integrative work package, the ESRs will assimilate these results into a coherent set of generic, green-tribology concepts and design rules – that will be made freely available to all – with a measurable impact on sustainability over the whole lifecycle of the system. All 12 ESRs will use complementary techniques, tools, models and approaches supported by their supervisors, research groups and non-academic mentors throughout their individual PhD-specific ESR project plans. By training the ESRs in scientific, technical and transferrable skills, they will become the next generation of high-potential scientists and engineers to instigate the step change that is required for a sustainable engineering future to serve the needs of a sustainable 21st century Europe.
Fields of science
- engineering and technologymechanical engineeringtribologylubrication
- natural sciencesearth and related environmental sciencesenvironmental sciencespollution
- engineering and technologyenvironmental engineeringenergy and fuels
- natural sciencesearth and related environmental sciencesatmospheric sciencesclimatologyclimatic changes
Programme(s)
Coordinator
1000 Ljubljana
Slovenia