Prof Tonio Sant obtained his first degree in Mechanical Engineering with first class honours from the University of Malta in 1999. Dr Sant started his working career as a process engineer with STMicroelectronics (Malta) Ltd. after which he joined Air Malta in the aircraft maintenance department. Here he was part of the aircraft structure maintenance group taking care of Air Malta's Boeing 737 and Airbus A320 fleet. His responsibilities included reviewing of aircraft technical documentation, evaluation of manufacturer's recommendations, implementation of structural repairs and monitoring of work undertaken on aircraft.
In 2002, Tonio joined the University of Malta as an Assistant Lecturer and initiated his post-graduate studies in Wind Energy at Delft University of Technology of the Netherlands. Dr Sant's research focused on the modelling of unsteady fluid flow around wind turbine, with the aim of improving the reliability of design software used in the wind energy industry. Tonio obtained his doctoral degree cum lauda in 2007. He was awarded the Excellent Young Wind Doctor Award 2008 by the European Academy of Wind Energy.
Prof. Sant is presently an Associated Professor at the Faculty of Engineering, University of Malta. He forms part of the Department of Mechanical Engineering and lectures Fluid Mechanics, Turbo-machinery and Computational Fluid Mechanics in the undergraduate mechanical engineering course. He also lectures about Wind Energy and Hydrodynamics to post graduate students taught MSc programmes. His main areas of research at the University of Malta include fluid mechanics and turbo-machinery with an application to onshore/offshore wind energy and hydro power He is also involved in supervising undergraduate and post graduate MSc and PhD student projects covering wind resource modelling, wind turbine rotor aerodynamics, floating wind turbines, hydraulic transmission and energy storage. Tonio has contributed to a number of papers in conferences and peer-reviewed journals.
Tonio was the Director of the Institute for Sustainable Energy (ISE) between 2009 and 2011 and the Chairman of the same institute between 2011 and 2014. Tonio was the Head of Department of Mechanical Engineering of the Faculty of Engineering between 2014 and 2017.
Ongoing Projects 1. Development of a Hydro-Energy Storage System for Offshore Multi-Purpose Floating Platforms, funded by the Malta Council for Science and Technology, Fusion Grant R&I-2015-044-T. Project Acronym: FLASC Industrial Partner: Medserv plc. Project website: www.offshoreenergystorage.com
2. Spar-Type Floating Wind Turbine Platform with Integrated Deep Seawater Storage for reducing carbon footprint of LNG liquefaction, funded through the Maritime Seed Award fund of the University Knowledge Transfer Office and Malta Marittima
3. Integrating Solar PV with Heat Pumps and Thermal Energy Storage in Zero-Energy Buildings, funded through the University Research fund Project Acronym: SolarPV-TES Project being carried out in collaboration with the Department of Industrial Electrical Power Conversion
Patent Sant, T. and Buhagiar, D., Hydro-pneumatic energy storage, system, Patent publication WO2016128962 A1, August 2016.
