Dr Mohammad Royapoor

Senior Research Associate

Email: mohammad.royapoor@ncl.ac.uk
Telephone: +44 (0) 191 208 3623
Address: Sir Joseph Swan Centre for Energy Research
Second floor, Stephenson Building
Newcastle University
Newcastle upon Tyne
NE1 7RU

Background

Mohammad is a chartered engineer with academic and industrial involvement in the design and optimisation of heating, ventilation and air conditioning (HVAC) services and building fabric since 2003. As a practising design engineer he has been involved in more than 30 major construction and master planning projects including Mercedes McLaren technology centre (Woking, UK), Sowwah Square commercial development (Abu Dhabi) and London Olympic Village. His PhD work concerned data analytics enabled by pervasive sensor deployment in order to develop hybrid (physics-based and data-driven) models of complex buildings. This modelling work in turn informed an examination of the prediction accuracy and calibration of EnergyPlus simulation engine, energy saving potentials of adaptive thermal comfort and the impact of climate change on building performance using multiple future weather scenarios. His post-doctoral work includes carbon saving potential of passivhaus fabrics, thermally activated building systems, building retrofit options under uncertainty and demand response in buildings. He has been involved in the supervision of several PhD and MSc students and undergraduate teaching since 2012.

Currently he is the principle investigator of an EPSRC project within a £719K Innovate UK partnership aiming to oversee the deployment, monitoring and optimisation of a new generation of solar PV films in Sub-Saharan Africa. He is actively involved in several other research projects, including £25m Centre for Energy Systems Integration (CESI).

He is a member of Chartered Institution of Building Services Engineers (CIBSE) and the Society of Façade Engineering (SFE).

Google scholar: Click here.

Research

The development and demonstration of a unique low cost scalable PV technology for International deployment: £76K, Engineering and Physical Sciences Council (EP/R042233/1), 2018-2020. Principle Investigator.
Building as a Power Plant: The use of buildings to provide demand response: £167K. Engineering and Physical Sciences Council (EP/P034241/1), 2017-2019. Leading the development of an energy model for a complex office building to identify the impact of flexible load management on electricity grid and occupant comfort.
Centre for Energy Systems Integration: £20m, Engineering and Physical Sciences Council (EP/P001173/1), 2016-2021. Conducting novel research to quantify uncertainties in building energy models using dynamic energy simulation and Bayesian statistics.
H-DisNet: Hybrid Thermo-chemical District Heating Networks: 2.7m €, Horizon 2020, 2016-2019. Leading Newcastle University’s investigation of case-studies and designing a hybrid thermos-chemical demonstrator system.
Integrated Investigation of Sustainability Aspects of Multi-Storey Communities: £160K,
Northern Powergrid and Newcastle University, 2014-2016. Conducting building fabric thermography audits, sensor deployment in 25 apartments and energy model developments to enable a techno-economic analysis of multiple retrofit scenarios.
Building Management linking Energy Demand, Distributed Conversion and Storage using Dynamic Modelling and a Pervasive Sensor Infrastructure: £607K, Engineering and Physical Sciences Council (EP/I000755/1) 2010-2014. Project Manager and lead in deploying pervasive sensors and the development and calibration of energy models.
Fertilecity project: Building integrated roof-top greenhouses (funded by Ministry of Economy, Industry and Competitiveness (Spain) 2014-2016. Developing a novel first-principle based method to represent plant cooling behaviour and active facades in a building energy model to quantify the benefits of integrated rooftop greenhouses.
Energy Efficient Rural Food Processing Utilising Renewable Energy to Improve Rural Livelihoods, £750K (EP/L002531/1), 2013-2016. Developing K-epsilon CFD models of a hybrid (solar/bio-mass) dryer for sub-Saharan Africa to enable the optimisation of natural ventilation and fenestration design to enhance dryer’s performance.
Towards zero-fossil CO2 emission in the European food & beverage industry (GREENFOODS), 2m €, Intelligent Energy Europe (Horizon 2020) 2013-2015. Developing training material for practicing engineers in process industries to cover modern refrigeration and compressor technologies and renewable integration into thermal processes.

Teaching

CEG1004 : Design of Sustainable Engineering Systems 1

Publications

Royapoor M, Pazhoohesh M, Davison PJ, Patsios C, Walker S. Building as a Virtual Power Plant, Magnitude and Persistence of Deferrable Loads and Human Comfort Implications. Energy and Buildings 2020, 213, 109794.
Munoz-Liesa J, Royapoor M, Lopez-Capel E, Cuerva E, Rufi-Salis M, Gasso-Domingo S, Josa A. Quantifying energy symbiosis of building-integrated agriculture in a mediterranean rooftop greenhouse. Renewable Energy 2020, 156, 696-709.
Muñoz-Liesa J, Royapoor M, López-Capel E, Cuerva E, Rufí-Salís M, Gassó-Domingo S, Josa A. Quantifying energy symbiosis of building-integrated agriculture in a mediterranean rooftop greenhouse. Renewable Energy 2020, 156, 696-709.
Royapoor M, Du H, Wade N, Goldstein M, Roskilly T, Taylor P, Walker S. Carbon mitigation unit costs of building retrofits and the scope for carbon tax, a case study. Energy and Buildings 2019, 203, 109415.
Zirak M, Royapoor M, Gilbert T. Cross-platform Energy Modeling for Scalable Urban Energy Simulation: a Case-Study. In: International Conference on Innovative Applied Energy (IAPE 2019). 2019, Oxford.
Muñoz-Liesa J, Royapoor M, López-Capel E, Cuerva E, Gassó-Domingo S, Josa A. Improving urban metabolism: Bi-directional energy and environmental benefits of rooftop greenhouse and building integration. In: 16th IBPSA Conference. 2019, Rome, Italy.
Royapoor M, Antony A, Roskilly T. A review of building climate and plant controls, and a survey of industry perspectives. Energy and Buildings 2018, 158, 453-465.
Liang X, Wang YD, Royapoor M, Wu QB, Roskilly AP. Comparison of building performance between Conventional House and Passive House in the UK. Energy Procedia 2018, 142, 1823-1828.
Bridgens B, Powell M, Farmer G, Walsh CL, Reed E, Royapoor M, Gosling P, Hall J, Heidrich O. Creative upcycling: reconnecting people, materials and place through making. Journal of Cleaner Production 2018, 189, 145-154.
Royapoor M, Roskilly T. An Evaluation of Fabric Insulation and Exposed Thermal Mass to Maximise Adaptive Thermal Comfort. In: 4th Sustainable Thermal Energy Management International Conference (SusTEM2017). 2017, Alkmaar, The Netherlands.
Giampieri A, Buchholz M, Geyer P, Bucholz R, Engel C, Royapoor M, Smallbone A, Roskilly T. Application cases and economic benefits of Thermo-Chemical Networks. In: 4th Sustainable Thermal Energy Management International Conference (SusTEM2017). 2017, Alkmaar, The Netherlands.
Wan Mohd Nazi WIB, Royapoor M, Wang Y, Roskilly AP. Office building cooling load reduction using thermal analysis method – A case study. Applied Energy 2017, 185(Part 2), 1574–1584.
Underwood CP, Royapoor M, Sturm B. Parametric modelling of domestic air-source heat pumps. Energy and Buildings 2017, 139, 578-589.
Liang X, Royapoor M, Wang Y, Roskilly T. The energy and indoor environmental performance of super-insulated dwellings – A fabric optimisation case study in the UK. In: 4th Sustainable Thermal Energy Management International Conference (SusTEM2017). 2017, Alkmaar, The Netherlands.
Nadal A, Llorach-Massana P, Cuerva E, López-Capel E, Montero JI, Josa A, Rieradevall J, Royapoor M. Building-integrated rooftop greenhouses: An energy and environmental assessment in the mediterranean context. Applied Energy 2016, 187, 338-351.
Fishlock C, Rajendran K, Royapoor M, Roskilly AP. Data Reasoning in the Evaluation of Domestic Thermal Energy Use. In: Building Simulation & Optimisation 2016. 2016, Newcastle upon Tyne.
Liang X, Royapoor M, Wang Y, Roskilly AP. Evaluation of energy and indoor environmental performance of a UK passive house dwelling. In: Building Simulation & Optimisation 2016. 2016, Newcastle upon Tyne.
Wong JH, Royapoor M, Chan CW. Review of life cycle analyses and embodied energy requirements of single-crystalline and multi-crystalline silicon photovoltaic systems. Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews 2016, 58, 608-618.
Royapoor M, Roskilly T. Building model calibration using energy and environmental data. Energy and Buildings 2015, 94, 109-120.
Chan CW, Siqueiros E, Ling-Chin J, Royapoor M, Roskilly AP. Heat utilisation technologies: A critical review of heat pipes. Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews 2015, 50, 615-627.
Sturm B, Maier M, Royapoor M, Joyce S. Dependency of production planning on availability of thermal energy in commercial greenhouses – A case study in Germany. Applied Thermal Engineering 2014, 71(1), 239-247.
Clarke J, Hand J, Kim JM, Ladha C, Ladha K, Olivier P, Roskilly T, Royapoor M, Samuel A, Wu D. Pervasive Sensing as a Mechanism for the Effective Control of CHP Plant in Commercial Buildings. In: Building Simulation and Optimisation 2014. 2014, UCL, London: IBPSA.
Sturm B, Royapoor M, Maier M, Joyce S, Wang YD, Roskilly AP. Dependency of production planning on availability of thermal energy in commercial greenhouses. In: International Conference on Applied Energy (ICAE). 2012, Suzhou, China.