Supported by Mines Saint-Étienne, the Institut Mines-Télécom (IMT) and elm.leblanc are launching the CORENSTOCK industrial Chair – Life Cycle-Oriented Design & Systemic Approach for Energy Efficiency in Heating System Storage. It is co-financed equally by the French National Research Agency (ANR) and elm.leblanc. .
The CORENSTOCK chair mobilizes teams from Mines Saint-Étienne
The chair is hosted at Mines Saint-Étienne by Xavier Boucher, a researcher and lecturer at the Fayol Institute and now the operational director of the chair. A team of research engineers, postdoctoral researchers, and doctoral students work together on this project in collaboration with eml.leblanc and other scientific teams from IMT Mines-Lille-Douai.
The objective of the CORENSTOCK chair is to create within 4 years a disruptive concept for a future domestic hot water storage element. This must be more energy-efficient, less costly in raw materials, recyclable, and self-adaptive. The concept must be intelligent based on the needs of the end-user, and its durability must be ensured via a continuous control and regulation system. Specifically, the chair aims to invent the new generation of hot water tanks. The system will rely on new functionalities based on artificial intelligence. To achieve this, the researchers involved in this project go beyond technological innovation. They bring a global and systemic vision of innovation. The mission of Mines Saint-Étienne researchers is to address all phases of the product life cycle (from consumer needs to R&D, through industrialization, to the recycling of parts at the end of the product’s use).
A major project addressing an industrialist’s strategic challenges
The CORENSTOCK industrial chair is the culmination of a long-standing partnership between elm.leblanc and IMT, both deeply committed to the industry of the future. The goal is to go beyond technological innovation by deploying a systemic approach that will drive the transformation of the company’s innovation capabilities and business model.
This collaboration is, in fact, driven by a broad ambition to transform the way the company innovates. The chair leads to rethinking the company’s economic model, committing to service innovation as much as product innovation, and integrating sustainable development issues through a systemic approach.
This major project addresses the strategic challenges that every industrialist must face: innovating responsibly by considering, from the design phase, the product’s usage context to adapt to its user, while anticipating the end of its life cycle within a circular economy approach.
