The infrastructures available to this doctoral programme are those of the University of Valladolid, as well as those of the University of Valladolid School of Industrial Engineering, of the research groups that support the programme and of other related groups and technology centres and institutes with which we have collaboration agreements.
The school is located in two adjoining buildings on Paseo del Cauce and Doctor Mergelina streets in Valladolid.
The technology centres are located in the Castilla y León Technology Park, a few kilometres from the school.
The facilities of the University of Valladolid Sugar Technology Centre are located in the Alfonso VIII building, adjacent to Doctor Mergelina street.
The laboratories of the research groups as well as technology centres and institutes participating in this programme are specifically described below:
Research
- Three-channel hot-wire anemometry equipment with calibrator and acquisition software.
- Precision three-dimensional displacer. 3D ultrasonic anemometry equipment.
- Velocity (2D) and droplet diameter measurement equipment.
- A PIV with double laser.
- Tracer gas equipment.
- Calibrated nozzles.
- Compact equipment for measuring velocity, humidity, temperature, and pressure.
- Two wind tunnels.
- Centrifugal pump installation for spray characterisation.
- Pelton turbine test bench.
- Hydraulic channel with variable slope.
- Means of calculation: four clusters.
- Educational licences are available for the CFD codes FLUENT and FIRE.
Teaching staff
- Francis Venturi turbine facility of head losses, pump curves and water hammer.
- Hydraulic bench.
- Oil-hydraulic bench.
- Compressible flow nozzles facilities.
- Reynolds experiment.
- Viscosimeter Couette Taylor equipment.
- System for determining the pressure field around an airfoil.
- System for determining the pressure field around a cylinder.
- Magnus effect equipment system for determining the aerodynamic coefficients of different bodies.
- Calibration of manometers.
- Industrial air treatment unit.
- Bank of heat emitting elements, radiators, fan coils and cold ceiling.
- Climatic chamber of 4x4x4m instrumented air treatment unit with flow, humidity and temperature regulation.
- Set of energy recuperators in air-conditioning systems, including enthalpy recuperator.
- R12 refrigerant charging and replacement unit thermal box for analysing the thermal conductivity of insulation equipment for determining the film coefficient in convection with phase change in the nucleated boiling zone equipment for determining the performance line of a flat solar collector.
- Solar thermal solar energy bench.
- Air-to-air, water-to-air, air-to-water heat pumps.
- Ammonia-water absorption machine.
- Cooling tower set of burners for liquid fuel combustion instrumented air-water heat pump.
- Compressor bench.
- Solar water and air collector test bench.
Measuring equipment:
- Measurement of thermal comfort. Omnidirectional anemometry, operating temperature and ambient humidity.
- Measurement of ventilation efficiency by CO2 concentration.
- Indoor air quality (IAQ) parameters: particulates, VOCs, CO, black sphere radiant temperature.
- Thermal cameras for infrared thermography.
- Equipment for analysing air conditioning variables. Hot wire anemometer, impeller anemometer, humidity, fluid temperature, surface temperature, differential pressure gauges.
- Thermo-flowmeter for heat flux density measurement.
- Datalogger equipment equipped with temperature, flow, and humidity probes.
- Combustion parameter characterisation equipment.
- Refrigeration cycle characterisation equipment, including R717 (ammonia).
- Calibrated nozzle and orifice plates for measuring air flow rates.
- Equipment for ultrasonic measurement of liquid flow in pipes.
- Computer equipment for equipment control and acquisition and processing of results.
- Alternative internal combustion engine test room, with natural gas installation and electrolyser for obtaining hydrogen.
- Emissions measurement equipment.
- Experimental equipment for gasification of lignocellulosic biomass.
- Installation of gases for making gaseous mixtures.
- Equipment for measuring the laminar combustion speed of different gas mixtures (constant volume combustion pump).
- Equipment for measuring particle velocities and diameters (PDA).
- Diesel-type jet characterisation system.
- Two diesel injection pump test benches.
- An oil pump test bench.
- A test bench for the ignition system of spark ignition engines.
- Various injection pumps and diesel injectors.
- A high pressure diesel common rail injection system trainer.
- Intake manifolds with injection systems as well as injectors and carburettors of positive-ignition engines.
- Six engines placed on supports dedicated to the teaching of their constructive elements.
- Gas turbine installation for low and high speed data acquisition system practice, with thermocouples and PT100 probes.
- Several PCs.
Equipped with bioreactors to carry out batch, fed-batch and/or continuous fermentation trials with control and monitoring of the operating conditions (temperature, dissolved oxygen, pH, etc...), autoclave, centrifuges, orbital incubators.
Equipped with incubators and orbital shakers, stirred tank photobioreactors and air-lift for both batch and continuous operation. The necessary infrastructure is available for the use of by-products from agri-food industries as raw materials for the growth of microalgae.
Equipped with stirred tank and fixed/fluidised bed reactors, thermostatic baths, pumping equipment for continuous operation, ozone generation equipment, laboratory columns for adsorption and ion exchange tests, laboratory pilot scale crystalliser, diafiltration equipment, adsorption pilot scale plant; closed microwave for biomass extraction; pH, temperature and conductivity probes, etc.
It has the necessary equipment for describing carbon sources (ash, moisture, volatile solids, conductivity, pH, extractives), spectrophotometer, refractometer, organic nitrogen, kits for determining organic carbon and ammonium, titrations..... HPLC chromatography equipment is also available for determining organic compounds and the monitoring of reaction and fermentation processes, with IR detection.
The Department of Systems Engineering and Automation has several teaching and/or research laboratories at the different sites of the EII. The different laboratories have real plants for control systems: level control, temperature control, pH control, motor control, distribution networks, etc., industrial instrumentation, field buses, SCADAS, a sugar industry simulator, programmable logic controllers, robots, etc., as well as all the software necessary to carry out research in the area of systems engineering, automation and robotics, which includes various fields such as advanced control, industrial computing, process supervision, robotics, industrial automation, process modelling and simulation, etc.
It has equipment for the preparation of materials and their mechanical, thermal and structural characterisation, as well as other instruments.
Preparation of materials:
- Polystat 200 T Hot Plate Press
- Microtome
Characterisation of mechanical properties of materials:
- Mettler Toledo DMA
- Instron 3365L1595 Universal Testing Machine
- MINIMAT tensile machine with oven
Thermal characterisation of materials: Mettler Toledo TGA/DSC1.
Structural characterisation of materials:
- FT-Raman Bruker RFS-100
- FTIR-ATR Bruker Vertex 70
- Micro-Raman Jobin Yvon-LabRam
- Optical microscopes
Other instruments for treatment of materials:
- Hobersal HD230 muffle furnace
- Polyscience 7K17A12E thermostatic silicone oil bath
- Kern PCB 3500-2 laboratory balance
- JP Selecta thermostatic bath
- Cryogenic mill
- Ball mill
The Instrumental Techniques Laboratory is a centralised service of the UVA at the disposal of its research groups as well as companies and other research centres. It has, among others, large equipment for the analysis and characterisation of materials through mass spectroscopy, nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy (NMR), x-ray spectrometry and transmission electron microscopy (TEM).
The University of Valladolid maintains a close collaboration with the CARTIF Foundation, a private technological centre through which a group of professors belonging to the Advanced Production Technologies group participating in this PhD programme carry out intense research work (under an agreement between the University and the Foundation).
The facilities are spread over three buildings in the Castilla y León Technology Park (located a few kilometres from the School of Industrial Engineering) and covers a total of 12,000 m2.
The UVa-CARTIF collaboration agreement gives access to all laboratories, test facilities and pilot plants of the technology centre.
All these facilities have a wide range of equipment, complete with state-of-the-art equipment, organised around the following themes:
- Robotics and machine vision.
- Automation and process control.
- Energy.
- Biomass.
- Biomedical engineering.
- Mechanical engineering,
- Environment.
- Food chemistry.
- ICTs.
- Feeding.
- Physico-chemical and physico-mechanical analyses and tests.
The University of Valladolid maintains a close collaboration with the CIDAUT Foundation for Research and Development in Transport and Energy, through a group of professors belonging to the materials science and engineering line.
This allows the use of its various laboratories and scientific infrastructures, in particular a twin-screw extruder, a RHEOMIX 3000p internal mixer, a calender and roller line, mixing equipment for CMMs, foundry facilities, a TERMOLAB furnace for sintering ceramics and a laboratory for characterising materials and components.
It also has a polymerisation reactor, static and dynamic universal testing machines, scanning electron microscope (SEM), dynamic rheometry, capillary rheometry, mechanical properties: impact, HDT, hardness, polymer creep index measurement (MFI), polymer injector and polymer calendering, among other equipment.
The LOU University Institute of Advanced Production Technologies, to which some of the professors of this doctorate program belong, has a collaboration agreement with the CARTIF Foundation that allows them to use the foundation’s laboratories for their research work. In particular, they have access to the infrastructures of the foundation's laboratories. The institute also has access to University of Valladolid facilities.
The Centro de Tecnología Azucarera (Sugar Technology Centre) is a centre affiliated to the University of Valladolid, whose board of trustees includes both the university and two leading companies in the sugar sector.
The centre has three rooms for scholarship holders/researchers, a library with a training room and a research laboratory equipped with the analytical infrastructure to develop the different research projects. Moreover, different reactors, laboratory columns for adsorption and ion exchange tests, laboratory pilot scale crystalliser, diafiltration equipment, equipment for measuring the efficiency of process additives (foams, etc.), adsorption pilot scale plant are available. The library has specific bibliography on the sugar sector.
The training room has computers with process simulators. Both in-house and commercial software is available for the development of these simulators.