A new state of the art environmental testing facility to help Irish businesses develop sustainable heating products has opened at GMIT this week.
The E-Thermal laboratory can expose products to a range of European environmental conditions including a temperature range of -15°c to +35°c and a relative humidity 10-90%.
It will be used to test heating products created by Irish SMEs for their sustainability and energy efficiency.
The first product that it will test is the Aergoma” concept from Galway-based ProAir Heat Recovery Ventilation Systems, a heat-pump and heat recovery ventilation system that has the potential to be improve energy efficiency and cut carbon emissions compared to existing products.
Speaking at the facility’s official opening this week Galway TD Seán Canney said that test facilities like this are an important part of moving Irish industry forward on climate action.
“I commend GMIT, Enterprise Ireland and ProAir for their collaboration in establishing this facility in GMIT. I am delighted that ProAir and David McHugh are leading the way in a very effective way.”
E-Thermal stands for Environmental Testing of a Heat-pump and Enthalpy Recovery Machine within an Advanced Laboratory.
It was set up GMIT’s integrated Sustainable Energy Technologies (iSET) research group with €360,000 support from Galway-based company ProAir and Enterprise Ireland.
Dr John Lohan, Principal Investigator and lecturer in the GMIT Dept of Mechanical and Industrial Engineering said that this is “first such test facility in Ireland capable of offering product development and pre-certification testing of sustainable heating and energy efficiency products to international test standards.”
The laboratory will also be used to support undergraduate and postgraduate projects for students of GMIT’s Energy Engineering and Mechanical Engineering programmes.
David McHugh, Managing Director of ProAir, said that their company has had a partnership with GMIT going back to the early noughties and the beginning of the IT’s energy faculty.
“So it was logical to contact John Lohan with an idea for a collaboration and a project like this,” he went on to say
“This type of facility is crucial to developing our ideas on low energy heating and ventilation systems.”
The current “E-THERMAL” project commenced in July 2018 and will run until June 2020, with ProAir’s Aergoma also expected to come on the market in mid 2020.
