The Industrial Gas Turbine (IGT) industry in the power range up to 50 MW has a key role in both decentralised electricity production and supply in the future.

The present research activities related to gas turbine technology in Europe are mainly undertaken on a national basis.

The European research effort as it stands today can be described as no more than a simple addition of the efforts of the Member States and the European Union.

Due to this fragmentation, isolation and compartmentalisation of national research efforts and systems, and the disparity of regulatory and administrative systems, a common purposive definition of research areas is hindered.

Research activities, knowledge’s, experiences in the gas turbine industry and research institutions needs to be bundled up.

Additionally, efforts must be focused on the dominant problems to be solved in order to enable European industrial gas turbines industry to maintain and possibly increase its share of the market whilst meeting the strategic priorities of the EU.

The principle idea of this project is to define and recommend European Centres of Excellence as a platform for a European Research Area related to industrial gas turbines technology.

The objectives of the project are:

• Identify technology gaps and barriers that need to be overcome to enable industrial gas turbine to become the most efficient, clean and reliable power source of the future.
• Establish clearly defined research fields, conduct an unbiased and objective survey to find the best appropriate research institutions in these fields, and recommend them as Centres of Excellence (CE).
• Define and initiate in clusters European research projects where the CE will play an essential role.

To achieve these objectives, four work packages (WP) have been constructed:

• WP1 is related to overall management, which also provides the basic infrastructure, needed to conduct the project.
• WP2 will be the centre for communication and dissemination of information. This includes arranging workshops and construction and operation of CE-IGT web site.

• WP3’s assignment will be to create a database of all European organisations that would like to be evaluated and than list them under three different categories:

  1. Academic Institutions
  2. Research Centres and Research Laboratories
  3. Industry R&D Departments

Based on clearly defined (in the CE-IGT Guidelines) criteria, the evaluation procedure will then be conducted based on questionnaires and on-site visits.

• WP4 will identify key problems that need to be solved to validate the technologies being developed in order to meet the strategic priorities in the EU. The technical barriers defined in WP4 will then addressed in clusters with the goal of initiating joint European projects where the defined CE will play an essential role.

The expected impacts and results will be more co-ordinated European research activities through the creation of CE related to the IGT technology.

It will also provide the base fro future high quality European research projects.

This concerted action will enable the European IGT industry to concentrate on priority research areas in which EU action can add the greatest possible value to improve the competitive position of the European IGT industry.