Project:
SUSTAINABLE REVOLUTION at ICAM Toulouse

Promising Results from ICAM Toulouse: GREC — The Green Revolution Energy Converter Project Advances

Engineering students Michael Peyrony-Rapatout and Pierre Le Provost at ICAM have once again impressed with a compelling update on their research into the Green Revolution Energy Converter (GREC) — the groundbreaking sustainable heat engine concept by Nils Karlberg.
The GREC engine, which operates purely on heat differentials, represents a novel approach to energy production without relying on combustion. Over several months, they have studied and tested detailed models using Ansys and Matlab to simulate the engine’s thermal and mechanical behavior.

🔍 Key Findings

• Performance is driven by three critical parameters: frequency, heat transfer coefficient (HTC), and temperature difference (ΔT).
• Adjusting frequency and HTC together significantly boosts efficiency — a finding that supports and expands on earlier Swedish research.
• In real-world applications, where frequency and temperature may be fixed, HTC optimization becomes the key factor for improving performance while maintaining low costs.
• When HTC is optimized, GREC’s performance approaches that of existing industrial systems in terms of energy output and efficiency.

The team demonstrated that even a non-optimized setup can achieve 6% efficiency, with extremely low energy consumption for revolver operation — confirming the system’s potential viability and scalability.

You may download the presentation as a .pdf file by clicking this link:
ICAM GREC Project Presentation in English

🚀 Future Perspectives

The students outlined several strategic paths to take the project further:

• Enhancing heat exchange using a grooved surface model to improve HTC.
• Introducing a heat transfer fluid system via a new pipe-based model.
• Studying geometrical optimizations to minimize energy loss in so-called “dead zones.”
• Designing a low-temperature prototype (limited to 200°C due to lab constraints), including both planning and instrumentation phases.

👉 Read more about the GREC project and earlier developments

The next phase of the GREC project is being discussed collaboratively by researchers and partners including:

• Jean-Pierre Fradin, Check Laval, Alexandre Marie, and the student team at ICAM Toulouse
• Nils Karlberg from nilsinside AB / K.I.T.S. S.A.R.L.
• Guillaume Courty and Anaïs Guiraud from the Territoire des Hautes Terres d’Oc

Under the coordination of Dr. Fradin, a detailed roadmap proposes five Work Packages (WPs) for an 18-month low-temperature prototype development, including:

The project aims to demonstrate a 5-module prototype system, each producing 50W, optimized for temperatures under 200°C using low-cost materials and targeted for TRL 4 (Technology Readiness Level).

💼 Toward Industrialization

The collaboration also outlines potential business models, including:

• Patent licensing and commercialization
• Establishing a manufacturing hub in Brassac
• Creation of a dedicated French SAS (simplified joint-stock company) to manage IP, partnerships, and collaborative R&D

Initial estimates place required funding at around €185,000, with additional efforts underway to secure equity and co-financing through crowdfunding, capital funding, and regional development programs.

This marks a pivotal step in GREC’s journey — from academic research to practical innovation, ready to address real-world energy efficiency and recovery challenges.