Stepping up North Karelia region by development of energy, chemical and material technologies (investment project)

PUHTIA is a group project of University of Eastern Finland (UEF, coordinator) and Natural Resources Institute Finland (Luke, partner), where both participants implement their own pairs of development and investment projects. The entity is funded by the Regional Council of North Karelia from the Just Transition Fund (JTF) of the European Union’s Innovation and Skills in Finland 2021 – 2027 program. In the investment projects, UEF and Luke will perform the investments and acquisitions according to the goals of the group project and update the research infrastructure and demonstration equipment to develop the technical capabilities of research and training units to produce development services to serve companies in the region with access to RDI cooperation and add to the research, development and innovation collaboration. The investments facilitate the demonstration tasks of the development projects, develop the equipment resources of the region’s R&D operators, increase the utilization rate and build a closer mutual and more business sector oriented cooperation than at present. As a result of the project, several companies in the region will start product or service development cooperation with the project partners, this cooperation creating a mutual competitive advantage, information exchange and knowledge sharing. At the same time, launching and implementing the Sustainable technologies engineering program of UEF will be supported.

Luke investments in the PUHTIA investment project will cover the following four research and testing entities: 1) Characterization and testing of coatings, such as paints, lacquers and fire protection agents, and evaluation of surface quality of wood-based products, rubbing strain and wear resistance; 2) Accelerated testing of decay resistance (soil box); 3) Standard climate chambers for studying and testing moisture and weather resistance of wood-based materials and biomaterials; 4) Manufacturing and testing equipment for mycelium based materials and biohybrid composites, including fermentation, incubation and selected further treatments.