Intermediate Research Support Technician for the project "Structuring a subsidiary for the cross-...

Mission: 

The SAVASCO project (Interreg POCTEFA) aims to structure a cross-border construction industry based on maize and sunflower stalks. Today, thermal insulation materials for buildings are mainly derived from non-renewable raw materials of mineral or oil origin, the extraction and processing of which has a major environmental impact, particularly in terms of greenhouse gas emissions and energy consumption. However, certain agricultural waste like corn or sunflower stems naturally have physical properties, such as a low thermal conductivity coefficient and a high moisture buffering capacity, which are in fact highly sought out for the creation of thermal insulation materials. In addition, these biosourced raw materials offer many environmental advantages: they are renewable, locally sourced and constitute carbon sinks. Therefore, SAVASCO's main objective is to contribute to the development of an innovative and sustainable economic sector within the construction industry arising from the cross border cooperation between France and Spain.

Indeed, cross-border cooperation has made it possible to set up a consortium of laboratories and companies with compatible skills in order to achieve the following results:

1) The development of low-cost stem collection and treatment processes.

2) The multi-physical, environmental and economic characterisation of the plant aggregates produced.

3) The formulation, implementation and characterisation of the use and environmental performance of the innovative construction materials created.

4) The construction of two teams that contribute to the research, training and communication tools, stemming mainly from biosourced and comprehensive solutions.

5) The recognition and networking of the various stakeholders belonging to the sector (agricultural cooperatives, designers, craftsmen, construction industrialists, material distributors, research laboratories and training organisations).

6) The realisation of a full life cycle assessment of the plant aggregates, the construction products created as well as the sector itself overall.

The post will be funded by the research group GICITED of the Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya, specialised in the formulation, characterisation and multi-physical optimisation of construction materials from agricultural by-products; and co-supervised in collaboration with the SUSCAPE group, from the Universitat Rovira i Virgili, specialising in energy modelling of buildings, life cycle analysis, circular economy, sustainability and process optimisation.

Functions: 

• Characterisation of construction materials based on vegetable aggregates and subsequent hygrothermal characterisation, durability and fire behaviour of the construction products developed during the project. For which the equipment available in the laboratories of the GICITED research group will be used.
• Support in the design of the construction solutions and the two full-scale prototypes that will incorporate the products developed in the project. One of them will be built in Tarbes (Tolouse) and the other in Sant Cugat (Barcelona).
• Energy optimisation of the prototypes by means of energy modelling tools and the incorporation of passive environmental control elements adapted to the climatic zones considered. The calculations will be carried out in Energy Plus and TRANSYS.
• Supervision of the construction works and recording and evaluation of the whole process. Data collection for the creation of an inventory for the Life Cycle Analysis of materials and construction solutions.
• Design and installation of the monitoring systems necessary for the analysis of the dynamic thermal behaviour and environmental quality of the prototypes.
• Follow-up of the monitoring that will include the testing of the instruments and the collection and analysis of the data generated. These data will be used to calibrate the energy model previously made.
• Drafting of scientific and technical documents for the dissemination of the results of the project