The Department of Energy Engineering at the University of Florence was the brainchild of the late Prof. Sergio Stecco, who began working towards its creation at the beginning of 1983. He grouped the machinery, thermodynamics and heat transfer, and mechanical plant sections, as well as parts of the numerical analysis, chemistry and physics sectors around a scientific hub whose goal was to develop and coordinate research and studies in the fields of energy conversion, and of the plants and machinery involved in these processes.

The complexity and range of difficulties of these questions require different types of competencies which, although they use a homogenous methodology, are able to handle the thermodynamic, physical, mathematical, mechanical, fluid dynamics, chemical, thermodynamics, plant technology and economic aspects of energy conversion.

Currently, the Department has seven sections: numerical analysis, chemistry, physics, thermodynamics and heat transfer, mechanical plants and industrial technologies, power plants and turbomachinery, and applied mechanics.

The staff of the “Sergio Stecco” Department of Energy Engineering consists of 69 members: 16 full professors, 14 associate professors, 29 assistant professors, 10 technical and administrative personnel. Another 23 students are enrolled in various Ph.D. programs in the department, along with 29 research fellows, and many undergraduates who are working on their final theses.

Here is a list of Laboratories in this department: pump test bed, wind tunnel, CFD lab, numerical calculations lab, fluid dynamic measurements, x-ray diffraction and catalysis, physics lab, heat transfer lab, wind tunnel, machinery lab, sensors for machine control and measurement, plant simulation, industrial engineering lab.