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Aalto University Professor of Mechanical Engineering Petri Kuosmanen has collaborated with Valmet during his university career for over 30 years.

'The conditions and activities have varied, but in recent years the collaboration has developed positively. Particularly impressive is Valmet's leading company programme Beyond Circularity and the strongly related invest in doctoral education,' says Kuosmanen.

Valmet is one of the leading companies, financed by Business Finland, that bring together an ecosystem of RDI actors around them. The Beyond Circularity programme seeks ways to turn waste and emissions into valuable resources, thereby promoting the green transition.

In connection with the programme, Valmet and Aalto are collaborating on more than ten research projects. Valmet also funds several doctoral researcher positions at Aalto's schools of engineering. 

'From the university's perspective, funding is important, but we also appreciate the fact that we are looking for relevant research topics together. This way, we combine scientific ambition with the industrial relevance of the topic,' emphasises Kuosmanen.

Viivi Villa-Nuottajärvi, Valmet's Vice President of Research and Development, confirms that Aalto is one of the company's most important university partners.

Collaboration from basic research to productisation

'Universities play a strong role at the early stages of research and product development. The closer we get to productisation and industrial scale, the more companies do themselves. However, often there is also something research-related involved in the productisation phase,' explains Villa-Nuottajärvi.

Valmet and Aalto's collaborative projects cover many fields. They can also be multidisciplinary and interconnected.

'For example, there can be surprising synergies in ecosystem projects. Of course, how well synergies can be exploited also depends on how active people are,' says Villa-Nuottajärvi.

At the Aalto University School of Chemical Engineering, there is an ongoing research project called Textile Waste Wet Processes, which focuses on the recycling of textile fibres. Doctoral researcher Tonmoy Saha is investigating how recycled textile fibres behave in mechanical and chemical wet processes. Concurrently, the emissions in the generated wastewater are also being examined.

'We already have a lot of process equipment that is suitable for recycling textiles as such and for producing new textile raw materials such as microcellulose,' explains Villa-Nuottajärvi, justifying Valmet's interest in textile fibre recycling.

The project is led by Professor Ali Tehrani and advised by Development Manager Heli Kangas from Valmet. The project is part of the Circular Materials Bioeconomy Network (CIMANET), which in turn is part of the Ministry of Education and Culture -funded pilot programme aiming to educate a thousand new doctors in 2024-27.

'In order to obtain high-quality recycled fibres from waste streams, many challenges still need to be addressed. The goal of this research is to fill this gap and thus promote sustainable textile recycling practices,' says Tehrani.

Professorship of Practice ties the knots in collaboration

At the Aalto University School of Engineering, common topics of interest include condition monitoring related to maintenance of paper machines, digital twins and metaverse. The aim is to use mathematical models and collected data to predict maintenance needs with minimal sampling.

Collaboration has been further deepened by the fact that Mika Karaila, Research Director at Valmet Automation Systems, started as a part-time Professor of Practice at the School of Engineering last February. Villa-Nuottajärvi describes Karaila as an important nexus in Aalto collaboration.

Karaila is supervising one of Valmet and Aalto's joint doctoral theses. He is also preparing a course Introduction to industrial metaverse for next spring and maintains contact with other companies.

'There is a lot of research connected to the industrial metaverse, with Nokia acting as a leading company. As both the operating environment and technology gradually mature, we can start productising the research,' Karaila describes.

From doctoral students to future experts

According to Karaila, Valmet is interested in both the content of the dissertations and doctoral researchers themselves as potential future experts whom the company might recruit.

'Dissertations seek deeper new knowledge, but there is also a need for young people to continue the work of the older generation.'

In his new role, the experienced research director Karaila has noticed a difference between corporate R&D and university research. He points out that the university is a good place to test "out of the box" ideas.

'Here, researchers have more freedom, which enables them to think of something new a bit more wildly. Companies often look for small improvements to the current situation, whereas at the university you can look at things on a larger scale and from different perspectives.'

Karaila reminds that customer perspective is also closely linked to research collaboration.

'The research uses test data from the customer and the customer is already eagerly awaiting the results. These new products and innovations are created to meet customer needs.'

Text: Heidi Hammarsten