Photo: Left to Right: Emmanuel Francalanza, Massimo Borg, Jasmine Mallia, Peter Xuereb, Angelo Mifsud, Paul Refalo, Ylenia Grech Mifsud.
The University of Malta and AIM Enterprises Ltd have recently kicked off a
The ‘Malta Low Carbon Development Strategy’, recently published by the Government of Malta, identifies compressed air systems as one of the main energy consuming industrial processes in Malta. It is estimated that the local industry wastes around 16,000 MWh/year worth of electricity to compensate for pneumatic leakages. This inefficiency annually costs up to
The project called ‘Development and Analysis of an IndustRy 4.0 System to Autonomously ImproVE the Sustainability of Pneumatics’ (AIR SAVE), aims to develop, produce, test and commercialise a smart system which improves the sustainability and hence the competitiveness of manufacturing firms. The AIR SAVE system shall continuously monitor the environmental and financial performance of pneumatic systems. To do so it uses Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) technologies to identify, distinguish and classify inefficiency sources in real-time.
Dr Ing. Paul Refalo, AIR SAVE project leader and senior lecturer at the Department of Industrial and Manufacturing Engineering of the University of Malta, said that “such a project brings academia and industry together to address Sustainable Development Goals and focus on environmental and financial concerns in manufacturing.” Dr Ing. Emmanuel Francalanza from the same department, and Dr Peter Xuereb from the Department of Computer Information Systems, shall be collaborating from Digital Manufacturing, IoT and Computer Systems perspectives.
“It is our pleasure, to be collaborating once again with the University of Malta, in such an important area both for us, and for the local and international industry”, said Mr Angelo Mifsud, CEO of AIM Enterprises Ltd. Mrs Ylenia Grech Mifsud, COO at AIM, continues to say that “this project builds on years of preliminary research and collaboration between both institutions, and we are very glad to see a concept moving forward from the labs to real industrial environments”.
This project also gives the opportunity to local students to pursue their studies at doctoral level. Research Support Officers Mr Massimo Borg and Ms Jasmine Mallia, have also embarked on their PhD studies related to the smart and sustainable systems they are developing in the project.
Mr Olaf Zahra (Chief Officer Technology and Sustainability at Toly Products), Ing. Anthony Caruana (Manufacturing Engineering Manager) and Ing. Tiziano Petrosino (Plant Facilities Director at STMicroelectronics), form part of the Industrial Advisory Board of the project.
One can follow project updates on social media and through the project website.