On 10 November during Discover University Open Week and to mark the 50th Anniversary of the Engineering Degree in Malta, the Faculty of Engineering will have a special pavilion demonstrating the various exciting ongoing projects.

There will be three zones dedicated to the Biomedical, Environmental and Transport areas of Engineering. The Faculty of ICT and the Faculty of the Built Environment will also be represented, as these originally formed part of the Faculty of Engineering. The Chamber of Engineers will be holding talks in the pavilion, while various Engineering student associations and Engineering researchers will be answering questions by the public.

Following the success of the traditional electric boat, the Department of Industrial Electrical Power Conversion at the Faculty of Engineering designed and built a solar catamaran. This project, which is being sponsored by a number of governmental and industrial enterprises, will also be on show on 10 November.  

The catamaran is designed to run on solar energy. It has a fuel cell on board that supplements photovoltaic energy in case of cloudy weather. The catamaran is powered by 6 high quality photovoltaic panels supplied by IBC Solar. Two sets of 24V 100Ahr batteries using Abertax Intelligent Battery concept, are fitted for energy storage. All the necessary battery information, together with positional information is provided via a GPRS signal and is viewable on the internet. It is also intended to incorporate an autopilot in the future.

The Research Project Team consists of Professor Joseph Cilia (Project leader and contact person [email protected]), Charles Azzopardi (Project manager), Professor Charles Pule’, Ing. Daniel Zammit, Donald Cassar and John Camilleri.

Students who did their thesis work on the project are Ing. Neville Azzopardi, Ing. David Grixti, Ing. Ian Busuttil and Ing. Sarah Baldwin

Everyone is invited to attend. Catering and parking facilities will also be available.