Head of the Unit:
Prof., Dr. sc.ing. Kaspars Vārtukapteinis
E-mail:
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; Phone: +371 29250437
The Unit of Engineering Sciences involves staff of the Technical Faculty and the Faculty of Field Engineering of the Latvia University of Agriculture (hereinafter – LAU), along with the scientists of the LAU agencies the Research Institute of Agricultural Machinery and the Research Institute of Water and Soil (existed until 30 June 2011). The Unit has been focusing on scientific, academic and technical engineering aspects of the engineering sciences. Within the last decade the Unit has performed an evaluation of the following issues: situation and prospects of local engineering industry; situation of biodiesel fuel production and use; prospects of development of engineering science laboratories; situation in the branch of small water power stations from the perspective of environment and property rights; problems and solutions in the field of preservation of historical values of agriculture and technology; digitisation solutions of melioration cadastre. Also the perspective development of engineering science study programmes was evaluated focusing on their academic provisions and technical supply.
A wider field of study within the Unit is power industry, in which study has been conducted in several directions. One of the most pursued of these directions is that of the renewable power sources, their procurement and use. Research is performed within the framework of one ESF and four ERDF projects. In several ERDF projects scientists of the Unit participate as co-operation partners together with other scientific institutions. A fundamental and long-term field of study within the framework of international co-operation is research of point and disperse contamination of surface and underground water caused by agricultural activity.
Within the framework of study projects funded by the Latvian Council of Science the research in the fields of bio-fuel and biological mass technology is continued; sustainable management of water handling systems; use of renewable energy sources for combined heating and development of energy saving technologies, in order to increase the power efficiency of agriculture; adequacy of crop-cultivation technology and development of efficient usage methods and functional models for both conventional and ecological agriculture; research and development of technological systems for the future dairy farms.