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Improved safety and billions more in petroleum revenues |
Just before Christmas, the Centre for Drilling and Wells for Improved Oil Recovery was named as of one of seven research centres for Researchled Innovation. The Centre will help to improve offshore safety and to bring Norway many more billion kroner in petroleum revenues. IRIS, SINTEF, the University of Stavanger and NTNU established the Centre last year.
Improved drilling methods will raise safety levels during drilling operations and will provide the fastest route to raising oil and gas recovery rates from existing fields on the Norwegian continental shelf. Enhanced oil recovery prolongs the lifetime of oilfields and brings billions of kroner more to the national coffers.
Technology for dementia patients |
How should we make use of technology in caring for persons who suffer from Alzheimer's? SINTEF is currently working on several pilot projects that are examining how technology can best be used by the health services and dementia patients.
Technology, services and organizations must be looked at as a whole. For example, when people with dementia are being tracked via GPS devices, who will follow up on the tracking process? Is a patient who has been fitted out with a GPS system sufficiently safe in traffic to be allowed to share the road with vehicles?
The scientists are also working on ways of helping such people to find lost objects with the aid of a mobile phone and RFID chips, and on projects that aim to improve the quality of life of dementia patients and their families.
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Photo: SINTEF |
Many elderly people who live alone at home have installed electric cooker safety monitors that automatically turn off the power if the contents of a pot are in danger of catching fire. However, many of these instruments disconnect the current too late, concludes a report from SINTEF's fire laboratory.
"In our tests, several cooker monitors switched off the cooker only after flames had appeared", says Reidar Stølen, a fire scientist at SINTEF NBL, Norway's centre of expertise in fire technology. The results of the tests formed the basis for SINTEF NBL's recommendation that type approval and a labelling scheme for electronic safety monitors for electric cookers should be introduced.
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Photo: Wikipedia |
SINTEF is setting up a research foundation with headquarters in Rio de Janeiro in Brazil. The Instituto SINTEF do Brasil will play an important role in reinforcing SINTEF's position in the international research and development market, says SINTEF Group President Unni Steinsmo.
SINTEF's interest in Brazil is primarily due to the fact that there is a large and still growing market for R&D in the petroleum sector. There will be a huge need for technology development in the near future, similar to what we have seen on the Norwegian continental shelf during the past 40 years.
 NEW PRODUCT: The world's first oil vacuum cleaner for shoreline rocks or other hard surfaces has been launched. The vacuum cleaner blows bark onto oil-soaked surfaces and then sucks the oil-soaked material back up again, a clean-up approach that is four times more efficient than conventional techniques. The product, called MOSE, was designed by master's students in NTNU's Department of Product Design.
The vacuum cleaner essentially automates work that is currently done by hand with a bucket and brush, and can be used with both bark and peat moss - or chemically produced materials.
The innovation has already tapped into several awards, and the students have formed a firm called Kaliber Industrial Design, which was one of seven Norwegian oil spill response companies that toured the United States to build networks to enter the US market. The oil vacuum cleaner was also presented at the Clean Gulf Conference - the largest exhibition for oil pollution cleanup products in North America.
Disabilities raise risk of HIV |
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Photo: SINTEF |
A study of disabled people in South Africa surveyed their knowledge of and attitudes to HIV/AIDS. According to project manager Arne Henning Eide of SINTEF, the two most important infection risk factors are lack of knowledge about prevention and the risks of infection. Disabled people are less able to obtain an education, are often poor and receive little information about this disease.
This group of people also find it more difficult to get to the doctor and to health services than healthy people, and many of them are discriminated against in the health services. These findings have led the South African authorities to modify their national AIDS strategy. The project was financed by the South African National Research Foundation and the Research Council of Norway.
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Photo: Thor Nielsen |
In the project "ColdWear", scientists at SINTEF have carried out climate laboratory tests on subjects exposed to temperatures ranging from 25 degrees below to 22 degrees above zero. Many of our vital functions begin to break down when our core temperature falls by more than a few degrees. Even at just five degrees below zero, finger and hand mobility are reduced, and our performance suffers.
The project aims to improve our knowledge of how much cold people can tolerate, and what happens to their performance. The findings will also form the basis for developing advanced clothing for people who work in harsh climates. Outside Hammerfest in northern Norway, SINTEF has been gathering information about the weather conditions experienced by petroleum industry workers and on the sort of tasks they perform.
Norway – a "green" battery? |
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Photo: Henrik Kofoed Nielsen |
A German government commission suggests making Germany's electricity renewable by using Norwegian hydropower as a "battery". The Germans want Norway to export Norwegian hydroelectricity to the North European grid when there is little wind, and use cheap surplus wind-power to pump water back into the Norwegian dams when the demand for electricity is low.
This would require Norway to build pumped-storage hydroelectric stations, which incorporate a turbine that can be used as a pump and then be reversed to generate electricity.
CEDREN, one of Norway's eight national centres for research on environmentally friendly energy, is studying what would be needed to implement the construction of pumped-storage power stations on a large scale.
Shanghai Jiao Tong University in China and NTNU are creating a joint centre for research on light metal alloys for clean energy. The new centre will include research with new battery technology and materials development for lighter and safer electric vehicles.
 SINTEF Fisheries and Aquaculture Research believe that it should be possible to significantly multiply Norwegian exports of herring roe to the Eastern European and Japanese markets. Norway is currently a minor player in these markets, with annual exports of barely 850 tonnes.
Herring roe is a well-established product in Asia, and as a by-product it has important potential, being very rich in proteins and omega-3 fatty acids. Herring roe is regarded as a delicacy, particularly in Japan, as well as in such markets as Russia, Romania, Belarus and Ukraine, where roe is used in salads. There is also an important market for capelin roe, a product that could be replaced by herring roe.
 Music at NTNU has always had an international bent, and foreign musicians regularly work with the university's Department of Music and its various performance groups and ensembles. Last autumn, the university awarded two of these musicians honorary doctorates.
In September, the German violinist Anne-Sophie Mutter was selected for the honorary degree in recognition of her years working with the Trondheim Soloists, a string ensemble that grew out of NTNU's music scene.
In October, it was the American jazz pianist Chick Corea's turn. For the last decade, Corea has worked with and played with the Trondheim Jazz Orchestra – which has its roots in the Trondheim Music Conservatory (now a part of NTNU).
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Photo: Jørgen Rosvold, NTNU |
The wild pig is returning to Norway at full speed – to the consternation of many. But the animal is actually an old resident. Before the Viking Age the boar was a natural part of the Norwegian coastal fauna. It lived in the humid and lush deciduous forest in Vestland, and was an important component of the human diet.
But climate change and agricultural development have slowly driven the species away. Researchers at NTNU's Museum of Natural History and Archaeology have determined this by conducting chemical analyses of pig bones from 5 000 years ago. Analyses of stable isotopes are able to show the difference between domesticated pigs and wild boar.
By changing the crystal structure of a substance, or the stacking of its atoms, it is possible to give the substance completely new properties. NTNU researchers have now managed to change the crystal structure of nanowires made of gallium arsenide and other semiconductors, which are used in solar cells. When these nanowires are "grown" with an atomic beam in a very high vacuum, the structure is changed so that they absorb light in a new way. With this level of control over the development of the nanowire's crystal structure, scientists can design solar cells that absorb light the way they want them to.
Published March, 2011
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