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Discover the stories of researchers at the
Faculty of Mechanical Engineering.

Floating wind turbines change everything

In order to become climate neutral by 2050, the share of renewable energy generated at sea will need to increase significantly. Floating wind turbines, solar panels and tidal power plants will play a crucial role in this.

CO₂ is not a waste product but a raw material!

To reach the 2050 climate targets, we must give up fossil fuels and fossil raw materials, and switch to circular carbon. ‘It will take a while to work out all the details,’ say TU Delft professors Wiebren de Jong (Large-Scale Energy Storage) and Earl Goetheer (Electrochemical conversion of CO2) . ‘But in thirty years time, the chemical industry as we now know it will no longer exist.’

Spider Webs inspire State-of-the-Art Sensor Design

For the past two years, quantum sensing technology specialist Richard Norte (Department of Precision Microsystems Engineering) has been working intensively with machine learning expert Miguel Bessa (Department of Materials Science & Engineering) - a collaboration that has led to a real breakthrough in science.

Fuel cells for zero-emission shipping

The International Maritime Organisation wants to halve greenhouse emissions by 2050. That’s not good enough for Lindert van Biert. He aims for zero-emission shipping using fuel cells and green energy carriers.

Creating a fossil-free chemical industry in a clean way? It can be done!

Next to transport and direct power generation, a large percentage of fossil fuels and fossil raw materials are used in the chemical industry – in the production of plastics and fertilizer, for example. The energy transition therefore is just as much a raw materials transition, one in which electrochemical processes play a crucial role.

Wheelchair owner and companion next to each other thanks to wheelchair attachment

A standard wheelchair is pushed, but if you walk behind it as an attendant, it’s sometimes difficult to keep contact with the person sitting in it, even though it’s a necessity. There’s probably a technical solution to this kind of problem, but then the right people have to know about it.

Delft research unravels mystery of motion of cilia

The cilia – tiny hairs – inside our body are important to our health. They help move fluids, such as phlegm from our lungs. Eduardo Gutiérrez Prieto, a master’s student in Mechanical Engineering in the Faculty of 3mE at TU Delft, explains through his research how cilia acquire their motion and how multiple of them can synchronize. This insight could lead to the more effective treatment of various illnesses. For example the treatment of smoker’s cough or other diseases of the respiratory system.