Archive

At the bottom of the ocean lie lumps of valuable metals such as copper, manganese, nickel and cobalt - materials crucial to accelerating the energy transition. A collaboration between five European countries called ‘Blue Harvesting,’ has designed and now tested a new collector that can gather these nodules from the deep sea bottom with minimal disturbance to the natural environment.

The maritime sector needs batteries for the transition to zero-emission shipping. Different ships with different operational profiles may require different batteries. The NWO Executive Board has awarded funding to two research projects of maritime researchers Henk Polinder and Andrea Coraddu. Both will focus on improving the use of different battery systems. The awards involve a sum of 4.2 million euros.

NWO has awarded funding to six technology-science research projects from the Open Technology Programme. One of these is the e-HEAT project by researchers Jurriaan Peeters, Ruud Kortlever and Lorenzo Botto from the Process & Energy Department. In this project they are working on the development of large-scale CO2 electrolysers that enable large-scale energy storage on a seasonal time scale possible. The outcomes are expected to also benefit H2O electrolysers and fuel cells.

Wind turbines are getting bigger and bigger and the wind speed is never the same on every part of the rotor – the rotating part of a wind turbine. That is why it is important to carry out experiments using non-uniform wind fields: fields in which the wind speed is not the same everywhere. With the opening of TU Delft’s Wind AI Lab – a globally unique wind tunnel – this will become possible.

All students at the 3mE faculty were given the opportunity to vote for the best lecturer of 2021-2022. The votes are a token of their appreciation for the unique and creative way in which the lecturers concerned teach. Good lecturers are indispensable for the quality of 3mE’s programmes.

Riender Happee has been appointed Professor in Motion Comfort in Automated Driving at the department of Cognitive Robotics, section Intelligent Vehicles. Happee’s research focuses on motion perception and motion comfort as key factors in the acceptance of vehicle automation.

Did a person fall or was he or she pushed? Cases where a deceased person lies at the bottom of the stairs are complex. To aid detection, the NFI is working with TU Delft on a computer model that can simulate human falls.

Alfred Schouten has been appointed professor of System Identification for Human Motion Control in the Department of BioMechanical Engineering. Alfred Schouten’s research focuses on the development of methods and applications for identifying and understanding neuromuscular control. He does this in both healthy people and people with neurological disorders.

Gabriel Weymouth has been appointed Professor of Ship Hydromechanics at the department of Maritime and Transport Technology as of 1st of September. Weymouth's research focuses on the development of fast, accurate, and robust computational fluid dynamic predictions and application of those techniques to the marine and maritime environment.

After almost ten years, Theun Baller stepped down as 3mE Dean. Of course, we did not let him go without well-deserved recognition during his farewell symposium.

The Dutch Research Council has awarded 101 experienced researchers a Vidi grant worth 800,000 euros. Eight Vidis go to top researchers from Delft, of which no fewer than three researchers work at the 3mE faculty: Michael Wiertlewski, Willem Haverkort and Kim Batselier. The grant enables them to develop their own innovative line of research and set up their own research group in the coming five years.

Rene Pecnik has been appointed Professor of Thermal and Fluids Engineering at the Process & Energy Department of the 3mE Faculty. Pecnik has a background in both fundamental research - specifically numerical analysis, fluid mechanics and turbulence - and applied research, having worked closely with companies specialised in gas turbine technology.

Peyman Mohajerin Esfahani, associate professor at the Delft Center for Systems and Control, has been granted the 2022 European Control Award (ECA). This award is in recognition of Peyman’s fundamental contributions to “data-driven optimization and control, and distributional robust decision-making”.

Scientists Just Herder, Paul Breedveld, Tim Horeman-Franse and Bart van Straten again demonstrated a fine example of science communication for a very specific target group. They received a group of elementary school pupils from groups 6, 7 and 8 from the Escamp district in The Hague.

This week the new cavitation tunnel will be opened at TU Delft. The research in this facility, officially called the Multi Phase Flow Tunnel (MPFT), largely focuses on two topics: the problem of cavitation in vessel propellers, on the one hand, and the potential of air lubrication in vessels, on the other.

TU Delft scientists provide insight into the limitations of super-resolution microscopy and offer a new calculation method to determine maximum resolution. The technology is important for studying processes in the living cell, discovering the origin of diseases and developing new medicines. In addition, their publication nuances major precision improvements previously claimed by fellow researchers. Their findings were published in Biophysical Journal.

On June 9, the TU Delft campus was buzzing with students' ideas about the future of energy transition. All faculties nominated their most appealing course from the faculty to the Energy Challenge Event to present their solution for the energy transition. Of all master students, Bart Boons won the prize with his master thesis about system integration of a high pressure alkaline electrolyser.

By 2050, the energy supply in the Netherlands will have to be almost entirely sustainable. In addition to energy extraction from natural sources, energy storage is still a major challenge. Is there a technical solution for simultaneous extraction and storage? More than 500 first-year students from TU Delft’s Mechanical Engineering programme worked for six months on a wave energy accumulator, which converts the energy from the movement of waves into the rotational energy of a flywheel. The design that performed best technically was given an award during the Design Competition on 9 June 2022.

Heike Vallery, professor Human Motor Augmentation at the department of BioMechanical Engineering, has been awarded the Alexander von Humboldt Award.

On Thursday 9 June, the TU Delft campus will be buzzing like never before. On that day, students will be presenting their ideas on how to accelerate the energy transition. Over the past six months, more than 15,000 TU Delft students have followed a course on energy transition. This has resulted in a large number of ideas and prototypes that can be seen on 9 June during the Energy Challenge Event, which is part of TU Delft's anniversary year.

Arjan Mol, Professor of Corrosion Technology and Electrochemistry at Delft University of Technology’s Department of Materials Science and Engineering and Scientific Director of the 4TU.Centre High-Tech Materials, has been awarded the prestigious European Corrosion Medal 2022 for his work on corrosion.