A new beginning in collaborative research between the industry and academia was made when the Institute of Chemical Engineering and Technology, Lahore, the Sui Southern Gas Co and Pakistan Science Foundation signed an MoU for studying the menace of corrosion of its several thousand sub surface pipeline.
The Pakistan Science Foundation acted as honest broker by bringing the two parties together and also by partly funding the project along with the gas company.
The Institute of Chemical Engineering and Technology will identify the problem and its solution for which the institute will set up a corrosion control centre to check the menace which hits several other industries.
According to experts, corrosion alone causes a loss of nearly 4.5 percent of gross national product annually.
Pakistan Science Foundation Chairman, Dr Farid Malik, Managing Director Sui Southern Gas Co, Munawar Basir Ahmed and Director ICET, Dr Arif Butt signed the MoU.
In his brief introductory remarks, PSF chairman, Dr Farid Malik said the benefits of collaborative research would be widespread.
He deplored that such collaboration between the industry and the country's 228 research units had been totally missing so far. Through the Foundation's pioneering efforts, some 16 projects have been identified where the industry would directly benefit from the research.
The Foundation has been striving to establish the link between the research institutions and private sector. Last month, a commercial project of producing bikes and rickshaws was signed.
SSGC MD, Munawar Basir said the company has been keen to develop in-house capability to tackle such problems. Corrosion of the underground pipelines has been a recurring problem. To tackle such problems, the foreign experts were extremely costly charging $1500 to 2000 a day.
He added that two multinational companies operating in Pakistan have supported the project.
The company is supporting the R&D project for more energy efficient appliances in the country. According to one estimate, he added, there is leakage of 100 million cubic feet of gas daily which if checked would minimise the menace of load shedding.
Speaking on the occasion, Director ICET, Dr Arif Butt said the job of the university is to make use of the knowledge. It is the duty of the government to assign target oriented research projects to the universities.
Arif Butt added that the institute would be setting up a centre for corrosion research and conduct research under the leadership of renowned corrosion expert Professor Dr Ijaz Hussain Khan. With the seed money from the Foundation and other sources, the institute would set up the corrosion control centre.
This is the first collaborative applied research project in which link has been established between end user, researcher and funding agency.