HYBUILD is a group of 21 partners from 9 countries. Every month, a new HYBUILD partner is introduced in our Blog section. Today,  the GREiA research group of University of Lleida.

GREiA research group at the University of Lleida

The research group GREiA (www.greia.udl.cat), headed by Prof. Dr. Luisa F. Cabeza, has long experience in thermal energy storage (TES) technologies, buildings energy efficiency, artificial intelligence, and energy use optimization. Since its foundation in 1999, the group has been developing TES concepts and systems for different applications, such as solar water tanks, building envelops, buildings HVAC systems, industrial applications, and CSP plants. One of the main objectives of GREiA is to contribute to increase the competitiveness of enterprises, through the collaboration in the development of new products and with technological assessment. The group is active in several working groups of the International Energy Agency, as well as the RHC European Technology Platform. GREiA collaborates with a big variety of companies, from local SME to multinationals, doing R+D+I or developing new products, and it also participates in different H2020 projects.

GREiA role in HYBUILD

The head of the group, Prof. Dr. Luisa F. Cabeza, is responsible for the technical coordination of the project. Furthermore, GREiA is the leader of the work package on life cycle assessment, life cycle cost analysis and standardization. Due to its wide expertise, GREiA is in charge of thermal energy storage components development, and has a key role in the control prototyping and artificial intelligence incorporation. Finally, the group is leading the task on exploiting synergies between HYBUILD and other global initiatives

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Prof. Luisa F. Cabeza holds a degree on Chemical Engineering (1992) and one on Industrial Engineering (1993), as well as a MBA (1995) and a PhD on Industrial Engineering (1996), University Ramon Llull, Barcelona, Spain. She started to work on thermal energy storage (TES) in 1999 and today she leads the GREiA research group at the University of Lleida, one of the biggest groups in the world working on the topic. She has an h-index of 47 and 336 documents in Scopus, 7 patents on TES, and over 200 papers on journals with impact factor. She has coordinated or led 8 national projects on TES, has coordinated the following EU projects: EFFIBUILDINGS, INNOSTORAGE and INPATH-TES, and has participated in MOPCON, REWASTEE, MERITS, Innova MicroSolar, HYBUILD, and SWS-Heating.

Dr. Gabriel Zsembinszki holds a PhD degree in Physics from the Autonomous University of Barcelona, Spain. Since 2010 he has been part-time lecturer at the Department of Computer Science and Engineering at the University of Lleida. Currently he is a post-doc researcher at the GREiA research group at the University of Lleida, on topics related to thermal energy storage based on the use of phase change materials, energy optimisation in industrial processes, energy systems, and modelling of refrigeration systems. So far he appears as inventor of 2 patent applications and published 14 articles in SCI journals (h-index 7 on Scopus. He participated in different European projects (FP7 andH2020), and he was involved in the coordination of the EU H2020 funded project INPATH-TES (H2020-CSA No 657466).

Dr. Cèsar Fernández

Dr. Cèsar Fernández is an associate professor since 2002. He graduated as Telecommunications Engineer in 1987 at the Polytechnical University of Catalunya (Spain), worked as communications engineer in projects related to the European Space Agency at INISEL (Spain) and obtained the PhD in 2001 at the same university. In 2001 he was hired as post-doctoral researcher at Cornell University (USA), working on constraint programming. Until 2017 he managed the Artificial Research Group at University of Lleida, focused on; using machine learning techniques for planning and scheduling industrial operations to optimize energy usage; planning energy purchase decisions for companies; and intelligent control tools for thermal storage. As an associate professor at the University of Lleida, among other positions he was vice-director of the Polytechnical School (2000), vice-rector for infrastructures and information technologies (2003-2007) and director of the Computing Research Center (2009-2014). Since 2000, Dr. Fernández has published 38 scientific index papers with a H-index of 11 and contributed to more than 25 international conferences, 15 of them rated as A/A+ JCR/CORE. He has managed 4 national funded research projects involving research teams of Spanish universities and research centers and actively participated as a researcher 8 national and international research projects.

Dr. Carles Mateu

Dr. Carles Mateu is an associate professor since 2014. He graduated from Computer Science Engineering in 2003 at the Open University of Catalonia. He has been working as systems and networks engineer in the University of Lleida from 1996 to 2003. From 2003 to 2007 he acted as director of the Information Systems and Communications department of the University, managing all IT resources of the university, either from central services to faculties and departments. In 2009, he got his PhD on Computer Science Engineering with research or artificial intelligence, focusing on solving computationally hard problems and optimizations. In 2009, after a 6 months postdoc contract at the Institute for Research in Artificial Intelligence, depending on the Spanish Council for Scientific Research, he joined the University of Lleida as lecturer and researcher on artificial intelligence, focusing on optimization and machine learning. From 2009 to 2011 he acted as deputy vicerector for IT systems. Since 2004, Dr. Carles Mateu has published 12 scientific indexed papers, with an H-index of 7, and contributed to more than 20 international conferences, 9 of them rated as A/A+ JCR/Core. He has actively participated as a researcher in 11 national and international projects.

Dr. Alvaro de Gracia Cuesta

Post-doc researcher at University of Lleida, Dr. Alvaro de Gracia participated in several international (2 H2020 and 5 FP7) national (4 Spanish, 1 Chilean).  Finished his PhD in 2013 and has been working at University of Lleida, Universidad de Antofagasta, and University Rovira i Virgili. He appears as inventor of 2 patent applications and published 55 articles in SCI journals (h-index 17 on Scopus). He has supervised 3 PhD Thesis. He was granted with a Juan de la Cierva Research Contract during 2016-2017, and recently was granted by a TECNIOSpringPlus Marie-Curie Actions. His expertise is focused on experimental analysis, numerical modelling, and smart control of thermal energy storage systems.

Dr. Eduard Oró

Juan de la Cierva Incorporación post-doctoral researcher at UDL. Recently, Dr. Oró has joined UDL as post-doctoral researcher but he has spent the last four and a half years working at the Catalonia Institute for Energy Research (Barcelona, Spain) as senior researcher, involved in different EU funded projects and leading the greenIT research line. He studied Mechanical Engineering at University of Lleida and Industrial Engineering at Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya. In 2013 he presented his PhD at the University of Lleida about thermal energy storage solutions. His research interests are energy efficiency, renewable energy and thermal energy storage for industrial processes, IT sector and buildings. He has more than 30 papers published, h-index 18 and over 1700 citations in Scopus.

Margalida Fullana Puig

Ms Margalida Fullana Puig has enrolled her PhD in November 2017 within co-tutelle between University of Lleida, Spain and University of Perugia, Italy. The title of her thesis is “Development of sorption materials for thermal energy storage (TES)”. The development of sorption or thermochemical materials (TCM) for thermal energy storage (TES) can be an answer to reduce the CO2 emissions and resources depletion contribution of energy and building sectors. This PhD thesis will focus on the characterization of physical and chemical properties to assess its performance; the ascertainment of the reaction efficiency by means of a corrosion, kinetics and cyclability studies; the design and implementation of a new laboratory scale set-up to validate various parameters of the reaction and the modelling and simulation, which will allow to easily change variables and to check their effects on the system. (Supervisors in University of Lleida: Prof. Luisa F. Cabeza, Dr. Aran Solé – Universitat Jaume I, and Supervisors in University of Perugia: Dr. Anna Laura Pisello, Prof. Franco Cotana)

Jaume Gasia

Mr Jaume Gasia his PhD in September 2014 under the supervision of Prof. Luisa F. Cabeza (Universitat de Lleida) and Dr. Steven Tay (Newcastle University) and he is presenting and defending his PhD in 2018. The topics of his PhD are on one hand the study of the partial load operating conditions in a mid-temperature range latent heat TES system, and on the other hand on the study of the dynamic melting concept in a low-temperature range latent heat TES system. During the development of his PhD, he has also participated in different European (H2020 and FP7) and Spanish projects, as well as in the IEA-ECES Annex 30 work group. His expertise is focused on experimental analysis and numerical modelling of thermal energy storage systems.