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A useful tool to ensure the energy efficiency of industrial thermal and air conditioning systems, thanks to a heat carrier nanofluid: the Maxwell 2020, conceived by Francesco Micali, researcher at the University of Salento.

The startup was born last September from the study of aluminum oxide nanoparticles, a material with high thermal conductivity that does not sediment when added to liquids. He used the nanoparticles to create an additive with large capacities: added to the cooling liquids of thermal systems, it is able to ensure energy savings between 16% and 32%. The potential market is huge, considering that we can estimate a total of 14 million heat recovery units, chillers and heat pumps in Europe and the USA. «It is called Maxwell - explains Micali - in honor of the physicist James Clerk Maxwell who, at the end of the 19th century, introduced an increase in the thermal conductivity of fluids by mixing them with metal particles. And 2020 because we have planned to open our plant next year in Lecce».

The scientific partnership with the energy and environment research center of the Department of Engineering for Innovation of Unisalento has enabled the necessary research - "And for this reason - Micali remembers - I will always thank Professor Arturo De Risi" -, and thanks to a team of international financiers: Thomas Grizzetti, Edward Coleman and Jeffrey Gray Wyman.

The idea has got an international patent and after being ranked third at Start cup 2019, the competition between innovative ideas of the regional agency Arti, it won many awards at the National Innovation Award (Pni 2019).