CAPACITY BUILDING IN EGYPT FOR ENHANCING WATER AVAILABILITY, FOOD SECURITY AND RENEWABLE ENERGY USING MOF ADSORPTION HEAT PUMPS

7 Pathway to impact

Egypt faces major challenges regarding water availability, food security and efficient utilisation of renewable energy sources. This project aims to support capacity building at E-JUST through developing researchers’ skills to carry out high impact research in Egypt national priority areas.This will improve the quality of lives for millions of Egyptian people including the disadvantaged, low income and rural communities thus improving their social and economic welfare.The pathway to impact is:
•Knowledge transfer between UoB and E-JUST through researcher training, research visits, collaborative PhD research projects and teaching materials.
•Introduce the E-JUST researcher to the UK industry in the fields of MOF manufacturing and adsorption system to enable knowledge transfer between the UK industry and academic institutions in Egypt. The project will identify such UK industries and arrange for researcher visitation to these industries.
•Dissemination of project findings through publication of one international conference and one journal paper, quarterlywebinars and website to educate local authorities, industries, and NGOs involved with water, food security and renewables.
Timeframe for economic development and social welfare:
Y1-Y3: Following the successful dissemination program during the project time, this will encourage government, local authorities, social and environmental NGOs and industries to study the outcomes from this project and assess its potential.
Y3-Y8: Through knowledge transfer, Egyptian industry will develop the infrastructure for manufacturing MOF materials and adsorption heat pumps forapplications like water treatment, greenhouse and dairy farm cooling and energy storage with ~10 units installed per governorate.
Y8-Y15: The wide acceptance of this technology will lead to major investments to install hundred units in rural areas, villages, greenhouse and dairy farms, factoriesand renewable power stations thus benefiting millions of people.

Describtion of the project

Currently, there is very limited research work at E-JUST on the development of advanced MOF adsorbent materials and their applications for water treatment, food security and energy storage, similarly, throughout Egyptian universities and research institutions and also in the region. This includes the skills or the knowledge to identify the most suitable MOFs for the required application, how to synthesize them, characterise their performance in terms of water uptake and thermophysical properties, and integrating them in the adsorption heat pump that suit the required application.
The new skills to be gained are:
1- Map the available MOFs in literature and based on their characteristics identify the most suitable water adsorbent candidates for the required applications.
2- Synthesis of new MOF materials and developing methods of enhancing their properties using materials like graphene, carbon nano tubes, graphite oxide.
3- Characterising the synthesized MOF materials using advanced facility like the dynamic vapor sorption (DVS), X-ray diffraction (XRD) and Laser Flash Analyser (LFA).
4- Develop scaling up method to produce the required quantities of the best identified MOFs.
5- Develop the most effective means of integrating these MOFs to the adsorber bed like packing or coating and associated technical issues like the effect of binding material on the MOF performance.
6- Analyse the performance of the identified MOFs in adsorption heat pumps for the required applications.
7-Enrichment the education skills in Egypt with MOF technology