The Institute

ISFTA acts as consultant to the Greek Government, the Public Power Corporation (PPC), the Institute of Geological and Mineral Exploration (IGME) and to any other company or organization involved in the energy sector and is actively involved in the Governmental planning for power production and industrial development.

Since 1950, Greece has depended its power production on the combustion of domestic fossil fuels. Taking also into account that Greece is the second largest lignite producer among European countries and the sixth worldwide, ISFTA’s activities are of major importance for the national energy policy.

Specifically, ISFTA has been working for over one decade in the fields of:

• Optimization of the use of Greek coal deposits in power production, as well as in other industrial applications.
• Improvement of the exploratory techniques and implementation of clean coal combustion technologies (CCTs) are among the top priorities of ISFTA activities.
• Fly ash utilisation for the production of cement and other building materials, as well as the development of qualitative specifications for the use of fly ash in concrete.
• Improvement of soil quality, which is accomplished by producing soil additives and organic fertilizers from low calorific-value lignite and coal combustion by-products.
• Development of innovative methods for environmental management in areas where lignite mining and power production occur, with specific interest in the effects of the mining activities on the quantitative and qualitative characteristics of surface and ground water, as well as applications of pilot methods concerning land reclamation.
• Biomass and/or waste co-utilization with brown coal in existing combustion/gasification systems.
• Technology transfer from and to market operators and decision makers, through international collaborations with countries with considerable experience on the exploitation of solid fuels (such as Germany and United Kingdom) and companies/organisations from Balkan countries, who envisage similar problems to those  in Greece.

Organisational Structure