ICP 2021

Pradip Dutta

IISc Bangalore, India

Manfred Groll

University of Stuttgart

Henrik Lund

Aalborg University, Denmark

Halime Ö. Paksoy

Çukurova University, Adana, Turkey

Silvia A. Nebra

State University of Campinas, Brazil

Welcome to the 6th International Conference on Polygeneration

Dear colleagues

On behalf of the organizing committee is my true pleasure to welcome you to the Sixth International conference on Polygeneration. We are very grateful to Prof. Coronas for supporting us and collaborating in the organization of this edition. Many of you are going to make great efforts to attend the conference during night, early morning or late evening. My special gratitude to all of you.

This edition is held completely online. The decision was made after delaying the conference due to the pandemic situation. We are grateful for your understanding with the technical issues that may appear during these 3 days. We have made a great effort to make this online modality as similar as the in person editions, using an online event platform that enables the networking besides the technical sessions. We would like to encourage all of you to take this opportunity to meet your colleagues from all over the world using the networking tools you find in the event platform. The organizing committee believes that online conferences with effective networking tools are an effective solution to reduce very significantly the environmental greenhouse gas emissions and costs associated to the travels of the attendees to these international gatherings, as well as to facilitate as much as possible the participation from whatever place in the world despite any circumstance that limits our travelling availability. And of course, it will also allow to better protect the health of the participants.

During this 3-day conference we are meeting around 100 Scientifics, from 30 countries from the 5 continents. Therefore, one of the challenges we face are the different time zones we are gathering. For that reason, sessions will be recorded so that participants can attend sessions held previously.

The sixth International Conference on Polygeneration -ICP 2021- aims to significantly contribute to reach the extraordinary challenge of achieving by 2050 net-zero CO2 emissions at global level. The conference offers an open space for presenting and sharing the most recent advances, new technologies, concepts and successful cases on the most efficient and environmental friendly ways to use energy resources. We received more than 120 abstracts, after the reviewing process, 88 are finally presented and included in the final proceedings and a selection of them will be proposed to be published in the special issues of the Conference. Besides the 88 technical presentations, we are going to have the excellent opportunity to focus on three important topics related to polygeneration systems during the three workshops devoted to: H2 as energy vector in polygeneration systems, solar cogeneration and district heating and cooling systems. All of these with the excellent inspiration of seven outstanding keynote speakers. We are honoured to start this conference with the presence of Dr. Enrique Playan, Director of the Spanish Research Agency and Prof. Henrik Lund, professor of the Alborg University in Denmark. On Tuesday Prof. Manfred Groll, Prof. Emeritus at University of Stuttgart in 2 Germany, will open the day with his insights on a Hydrogen-Electricity Energy Economy and Prof Silvia Nebra, visitant professor at the Federal University of ABC – Center of Engineering, Modeling and Social Sciences (CECS/UFABC), and researcher at the Interdisciplinary Center of Energy Planning of the State University of Campinas in Brazil will present proposals to improve the performance and efficiency in the production process from sugarcane. The third day Prof. Halime Paksoy, Director of the Center for Environmental Research at Çukurova University, Adana, Turkey, and Prof. Pradip Dutta, Chair Professor at the Department of Mechanical Engineering of the Indian Institute of Science will focus on the role of energy storage to effective integration of renewable energy and energy efficiency in polygeneration systems. Finally, in the closing ceremony Prof. Joan Carles Bruno, Professor at the Mechanical Engineering Department and member of the Research Group CREVER on Thermal Engineering from Universitat Rovira i Virgili in Spain will analyze the technologies and new trends in polygeneration systems.

Among all the papers presented during the conference, two of them will be awarded: best paper and best paper student award. At the end of each session every attendee will be asked to fill in a poll indicating the paper you consider can be selected as best paper. The awards will be decided by the awards committee and announced on Wednesday, during the closing ceremony.

While concluding, I take the opportunity to welcome each one of you and express our gratitude in your agreeing to participate in this sixth International Conference on Polygeneration. Enjoy your participation in the ICP2021 and we invite you to visit our region Aragon and our city Zaragoza at least virtually in the booth you may find in the conference platform. Thank you and have wonderful conference days.