Open Technology Programme funds three Delft research projects

The board of NWO Domain Applied and Engineering Sciences awards funding to seven research projects through the Open Technology Programme. Three of the total seven proposals have been awarded to Delft researchers. In total, NWO is funding the projects with 5.8 million euros, companies involved and other organisations are investing 900 thousand euros.

The three Delft honoured projects are:

AdaptCoast: Adaptive Coastal monitoring and modelling of intermittent anthropogenic and natural impacts on beach-dune systems
Roderik Lindenbergh, Civil Engineering and Geosciences (CEG)
Coastal beach-dune systems worldwide are under increasing pressure from sea level rise and increasing urbanization. A lack of knowledge on the (long-term) impact of anthropogenic events on coastal dune development impacts our possibilities to manage these coastal systems. The AdaptCoast project aims to develop new adaptive monitoring, analysis and modelling tools to obtain new knowledge and tools to assess the long term human induced impacts on beach dune systems. 

UPCAST GLASS: Upcycling waste glass by casting
Mauro Overendt, Architecture and the Built Environment
Glass recycling provides opportunities for recovering materials and reducing production energy demand, but most non-container glass is currently down-cycled or landfilled at end-of-life, because glass production processes cannot accommodate the contamination and compositional variations of waste glass streams. UPCAST GLASS addresses this by: (i) exploring a novel casting process for recycled glass that accommodates recipe variations and contaminants from a broad range of waste glass streams; (ii) developing new methods for assessing the influence of defects in the engineered recycled glass components; (iii) providing a database of material properties and design guidelines for recycling waste glass into high-value products. 

Intelligent design of sustainable Sugar(cYclodextrin)-based adsorbents for the Removal of Organic microPollutants and PFAS from water (SYROP1)
Othon Moultos, Mechanical, Maritime and Materials Engineering (3mE)
The contamination of water with PFAS and other harmful micropollutants from domestic, industrial, and agricultural activities poses a grave threat to the environment and public health. The researchers will use advanced molecular modeling techniques, machine learning, and experiments to design and develop new sustainable highly efficient sugar-based adsorbents that can selectively remove PFAS and other high-priority harmful components during water treatment. These new adsorbents will have distinct advantages over current state-of-the-art materials for water treatment (e.g., activated carbon), and aim to become the new standard. 

Please read the press release of NWO.