Bases for this cooperation were laid down on a recent trip of a group of professors to Europe.
A delegation of researchers from the FAPESP SHELL Research Centre for Gas Innovation (RCGI) recently returned from a trip throughout Europe, where new partnerships and collaborations on research projects were discussed. The team, formed by Professors Júlio Meneghini – Scientific Director of the RCGI, and Claudio Oller and Celma de Oliveira Ribeiro – from the Polytechnic School of the University of São Paulo (Poli-USP); Edmilson Moutinho – from the Energy and Environment Institute (IEE); and consultant Karen Mascarenhas visited various institutions in three countries.
“At the beginning, we held technical meetings with the Sustainable Gas Institute (SGI), of the Imperial College, in England. We are in contact with the Imperial College to collaborate in the preparation of a proposal that complies with the public bid recently released by FAPESP to create a research center for new energy sources. The idea is to collaborate with the experience and know how that we gained with the conception of the RCGI,” says Meneghini.
During the second part of the trip, the group took part in an encounter of natural gas experts at the United Nations Office in Geneva (UNOG). “There, it was clear to me that there is a convergence of the actions of this group of natural gas experts with groups of specialists in clean energy from fossil fuels and regarding renewable energy sources. They are independent groups, but the next actions are planned so that there will be a convergence among them. For example: the production of clean electricity from natural gas, with the use of Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS). That is: it is possible to generate clean energy from fossil fuel.”
The trip ended with a visit by Meneghini and Moutinho to the French Institute of Petroleum and New Energy Sources (IFPEN). “We are studying eventual ways of collaborating in research with the Institute, especially in the areas of combustion and new energy sources. And we are also pursuing negotiations of a partnership with the French company Total, which is a partner of Shell and with Petrobras, with joint pre-salt production,” says the Scientific Director.