Canolfan Ymchwil Geoamgylcheddol

Around the world, the legacy of past industrial activity such as the presence of persistent organic pollutants (POPs) worldwide and the current disposal of waste have had damaging effects on world populations. Today, as climate change becomes more apparent and developing countries experience mushrooming economic growth, the need to find new solutions to waste and energy sources is even more pressing.

The Geoenvironmental Research Centre (GRC) is shaping the future by tackling the problems caused by the environmental effects of waste, regionally and around the world, and is providing new solutions to energy generation. Problems associated with contaminated land, landfill engineering, land reclamation, slope stability, waste disposal, including high level nuclear waste, and heat losses from buried objects, are aspects of the centre’s research, together with the influence of environmental conditions on the performance of underground distribution systems. The growing demand for energy, climate change and a carbon constrained future mean that the geo-environmental agenda is of increasing strategic importance globally. With its wide remit of work and interdisciplinary expertise, the Centre is well positioned to play a major part in developing pragmatic solutions to such challenges.

Led by Professor Hywel Thomas, the Centre was established in 1996 and has been a leader in the field of geo-environmental engineering. The Centre has brought together practitioners, experts, universities, industry, international organisations and governments to tackle geo-environmental issues both at home and abroad.

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The mission of the GRC is to undertake research and development; to provide leadership and education; and to engage with industry at the leading edge of the geoenvironmental arena.

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Flexis

The GRC are proud to announce their involvement in the recently launched FLEXIS project.

The five-year, £24m EU-backed project was announced today by Welsh Government Finance Minister Jane Hutt AM during a visit to the University.

FLEXIS is a pan-Wales energy research project. Led by Cardiff University, FLEXIS includes the leading energy academics from Cardiff University, Swansea University and the University of South Wales, FLEXIS will focus on the development of an energy systems research capability in Wales, building on the world-class capability that already exists in these Universities in the energy area.

The project will tackle some of the most pressing issues currently facing society, such as climate change, rising energy prices and fuel poverty.

The main objectives of the project will be to develop collaborations with companies that will result in an increase in research funding coming into Wales, which in turn will result in a substantial increase in the number of good quality researchers working in this area.

SAFE Barriers - A Systems Approach to Engineered Barriers

This is a multidisciplinary project, funded by EPSRC and the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority (NDA), looking into the THMC evolution of Engineered Barrier Systems (EBS) under a range of environmental conditions. The programme takes a whole systems approach to the EBS, underpinned by the development of novel advanced monitoring techniques. The total cost of the project is £1.3M and will be running until September 2016.

SAFE Barriers is a joint project between the Universities of Strathclyde, Cardiff, Edinburgh, Glasgow, Newcastle, Nottingham and Oxford and the British Geological Survey. A series of laboratory experiments will be carried out in which advanced monitoring technologies will be deployed and refined for simultaneous imaging of THMC variables. The information obtained will be used to gain a predictive understanding of the THMC evolution of clay-based engineered barriers, and their interfaces. A team of researchers at the GRC is investigating the aspects of compacted clay behaviour under elevated temperatures up to 150°C through an extensive experimental and theoretical programme.

Facilities

The Centre conducts research at the cutting edge of the geoenvironmental and geotechnical fields, with a commitment to serve the local and national research needs of industry.

Equipped with a wide range of traditional and state-of-the-art super-computing systems, the GRC’s centrepiece is a newly installed data visualisation suite for stereoscopic projection and for the 3D VR exploration of geoenvironmental problems.

The Centre is also equipped with extensive geotechnical and geoenvironmental experimental laboratory facilities. This includes a 100G large 3m-diameter geotechnical centrifuge for the simulation and modelling of geotechnical structures and processes.

The Geoenvironmental Research Park, or GRP, is a £5M consortium project led by the Centre. The GRP performs large scale R&D, in situ field testing and demonstration projects for Objective 1 environmental SMEs. Its base site is in Port Talbot and it has further satellite sites across Wales.

The Centre is the lead partner in a pan-European infrastructure co-operation network, benefiting from access to a wide variety of European-based facilities and expertise via the GeoEnvNet project. The class of infrastructure covered by the network includes large-scale testing facilities, large-scale computing facilities and centres of competence.

As the founding member of the highly successful all-Wales Land Regeneration Network (LRN), the GRC held workshops, seminars and networking sessions for the delivery and dissemination of valuable industry information. The LRN co-hosted and supported numerous launches and public consultations for environmental stakeholders in Wales.

In addition to high specification PCs the Centre uses the newly procured cluster managed by Advanced Research Computing @ Cardiff (ARCCA), boasting 2048 3.0GHz processing cores and a high-performance interconnect. Facilities also include a distributed computing system that utilises the large quantity of spare CPU time available on desktop PCs around the university.

Experimental equipment includes leaching columns and triaxial permeameters; computer-controlled triaxial testing equipment; graviometric and volumetric pressure plate extractor equipment; and a large scale shear box.

Analytical facilities are also available for solids, liquids and gases, such as X-ray diffraction, X-ray fluorescence, electron microscopy, gas chromatography, ion chromatography, and atomic absorption spectrometry.