PhD Position, Department of Civil & Environmental Engineering

Funded by Department of Agriculture, Stimulus Fund

"GreenGrass:  Developing grass for sustainable renewable energy generation and value added products."

This project requires a PhD student for a 3 and a half year period. The work is in collaboration with Teagasc (Agricultural Research Centre) and The Questor Centre, Queens University Belfast. The concept of the €1.2million collaborative project is to ascertain the potential biogas production from grass, to examine the separation of fibre from grass/silage for use as an insulation material and to establish the reduced biogas potential associated with the fibre-less grass silage. The concept of this PhD study is to design a series of sizeable rigs (ca 60L each) which are optimized for digestion of grass silage. These rigs may operate in up-flow, down-flow or two stage mode.

The project starts December 2007/January 2008.
The role carries a tax free stipend of €18,000 p.a. plus fees; is based in the Environmental Research Institute (http://www.ucc.ie/en/ERI/) under the supervision of Dr Jerry D Murphy (www.ucc.ie/serg/jerry.html). The biofuels research team will comprise a principle investigator, a senior Post Doc, three PhD students and three masters students. The suitable candidate will have a Masters Degree or at least a first class honours degree in Civil, Process or Mechanical Engineering/Microbiology/Biotechnology.

Written applications including CV, and details of two academic referees to Dr Jerry D Murphy, Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, University College Cork, Ireland; email: jerry.murphy@ucc.ie, who will also be available for informal discussion.

Closing date:Friday, 30 November 2007