Expansion of UiT Narvik collaboration to Central Asia
The HK-dir Project (CPEA-ST-2019/10029) Academic Cooperation in Post-graduate Engineering Education led by Prof. Mohamad Mustafa from UiT and Prof. Hong R. Kim from Nazarbayev University, funded by Direktoratet for høgare utdanning og kompetanse.
Campus Narvik joined The Arctic University of Norway, UiT, only 6 years ago. Since then, the Department of Building, Energy and Material Technology is building up its competence in research and establishing brought collaboration network. Contact with foreign research institutes is increasing the visibility of UiT, and preparing grounds for mutual research addressing common challenges in the field of civil engineering. One such project is HK-dir Project (CPEA-ST-2019/10029) Academic Cooperation in Post-graduate Engineering Education led by Prof. Mohamad Mustafa from UiT and Prof. Hong R. Kim from Nazarbayev University, funded by Direktoratet for høgare utdanning og kompetanse. Kazak delegation, consisting of professors, lecturers and students from different study programs, came to Norway in November 2022, where Iveta Novakova got to know them and learn about research activities at Nazarbayev University.
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Overlap of research topics dealing with sustainability, circularity and the utilisation of waste streams in concrete and geopolymer was recognised. Another common challenge is climate with low temperatures. Frost is a durability concern of every building material. Therefore, Iveta - a researcher in the field of concrete technology and Boy-Arne - a concrete laboratory leader, decided to visit Nazarbayev University in Astana and discuss further potential collaboration within DeTeA research group.
During our visit, we met three main and several other professors dealing with building materials from a technological and structural point of view, visited all available facilities and discussed local research extensively. Prof. Chang-Seon Shon works with the utilisation of Basic Oxygen Furnace (BOF) slags as binders or aggregates supported by carbonation. Nowadays, carbonation is a topic in high demand. UiT has already conducted some testing and activities that can increase thanks to the new CO2 curing chamber financed by DeConcrete and Geosumat projects.
Iveta gave a presentation about activities in the DeTeA research group with the aim of identifying even more areas for further research collaboration. Project GEOSUMAT, which deals with the development of geopolymer with dispersed fibre reinforcement, gained a lot of attention as the main studied waste stream material is wood incineration fly ash. In Kazakstan, there are many coal-fired power stations and large quantities of fly ash are presently utilised at very low levels due to its poor quality. Prof. Shon refers to those fly ashes as "outside of ASTM "and tries to change the habits of those power plants to increase the ashes' quality and uniformity, so their utilisation potential is higher.
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Astana is a new city; therefore, very little construction and demolition waste (CDW) exists there. Projects focused on CDW are in high interest at UiT, but do not overlap with activities at Nazarbayev University, but still, a related issue/area was identified. The by-product of concrete production is concrete slurry generated during the washing of ready-mix concrete trucks and other activities in concrete plants. This concrete slurry can be beneficially utilised in new concrete or geopolymers, and thus researchers from both institutes consider concrete slurry as one viable aspect for further research projects.
Many good ideas were raised during the visit, and researchers agreed to apply for a common research project if any suitable funding opportunity will pop up. Until then, the collaboration will be maintained by exchanging students in summer internships, joined master thesis or joined PhD. Joined supervision of students will be beneficial for both institutes. Funding for joined PhD might be eventually covered by the Public Sector PhD Project – Doctoral Project in the Public Sector from The Research Council of Norway.
Collaboration building visit was successful, and as it took place just shortly before The Independence Day of the Republic of Kazakstan, Iveta attended the Nazarbayev University event, where the president of Nazarbayev University, Shigeo Katsu, gave a speech followed by several artistic performances of Kazak culture.
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