I recently had the pleasure of opening GMIT’s international standard E-THERMAL Test Facility.
The facility, which is the first of its type in Ireland, is aimed at helping SMEs develop new sustainable heating products.
E-THERMAL stands for Environmental Testing of a Heat-pump and Enthalpy Recovery Machine within an
Advanced Laboratory.
The facility has been established by GMIT’s integrated Sustainable Energy Technologies (iSET) research group with financial support of €360,000 from Galway-based company ProAir and Enterprise Ireland.
Projects like E-THERMAL are vital for industry to move towards our objectives around Climate Action and I commend Enterprise Ireland and ProAir for their collaboration in establishing this facility at GMIT.
Climate Action is a priority for Government and we will shortly be publishing an All of Government Action Plan to deal with Climate Change.
This is exactly the kind of project that is needed to achieve our goals.
Dr John Lohan, Principal Investigator and lecturer in the GMIT Dept of Mechanical and Industrial
Engineering, said it was the 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.
Research Assistant David Hunt, and PhD researcher on the project, is a former graduate of GMIT’s Energy Engineering Degree Programme and has
played a central role in the design, construction and commissioning of the new facility.
The current E-THERMAL project will run until June 2020.
The project team are all members of GMIT’s integrated Sustainable Energy Technologies (iSET) research
group who conduct research on sustainable heating.
The E-THERMAL project team consists of Dr Laurentiu Dimache and Dr John Lohan, Principal Investigators, Dr Naoise McSweeney, Research Fellow and David
Hunt, Research Assistant.