reading time: min

The coming age of ‘solar everywhere’

From image recognition to medical diagnostics, Machine Learning has a huge impact. Yet Elvin Isufi adds an extra dimension, enabling its analyzing power to complex networks such as recommender systems, and more down-to-earth: water management.

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.

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Our 180th anniversary focusses on speeding up the energy transition. These are some of our Stories of Science.

Stories

leestijd: 9 min

A geothermal research well on TU Delft's premises

Some ten years ago a group of TU Delft students got the idea of realizing a geothermal well at the university campus. What at first seemed like a wild plan was set into motion when it became clear the campus grounds were in fact an ideal location. Now, for theme leader Phil Vardon things are almost about to get real. After years of measuring, liaising and researching, detailed preparations to make it a reality are in full flow now. “This geothermal source on our campus will become one of the world’s biggest hotspots for research into geothermal energy.”

reading time: 4, 5 min

Ultimate challenge: to make 7 million buildings energy neutral on time

Contentious. That is an apt description of the Climate Agreement’s requirement of achieving a near-zero energy status in the built environment by 2050. How is this supposed to work for the approximately 7 million existing homes and other buildings? Henk Visscher, Professor of Housing Quality and Process Innovation, advocates an active role for scientists in the much-needed innovation. “We need drivers who can make processes better, easier and less expensive.”

Watching time: 12 min

ESP Lab - Lucia Beloqui Larumbe, Power Electronics

Four designers from Delft University of Technology travelled to Lake Victoria, Tanzania and partnered with Sagar Energy Solutions to design a solar-powered fishing lamp for the night fishing industry. This effort aims to put an end to the reliance on dangerous and expensive kerosene lanterns.

Watching time: 12 min

ESP Lab - Peter Palensky, Digital Technologies

Four designers from Delft University of Technology travelled to Lake Victoria, Tanzania and partnered with Sagar Energy Solutions to design a solar-powered fishing lamp for the night fishing industry. This effort aims to put an end to the reliance on dangerous and expensive kerosene lanterns.

Watching time: 12 min

ESP Lab – Miro Zeman, Photovoltaics

Four designers from Delft University of Technology travelled to Lake Victoria, Tanzania and partnered with Sagar Energy Solutions to design a solar-powered fishing lamp for the night fishing industry. This effort aims to put an end to the reliance on dangerous and expensive kerosene lanterns.

reading time: 6 min

Is hydrogen-powered air travel the future?

Hydrogen is a sustainable alternative to kerosene-powered air travel because there are no CO₂ emissions. But hydrogen is also associated with challenges and risks, such as the danger of explosion. TU Delft scientist Dr. Ivan Langella aims to use mathematical models, high-fidelity computational simulations and experiments to develop a zero-emission hydrogen-powered engine that will enable aircraft to fly safely and efficiently.

reading time: 4 min

Using smart technology to make fuel out of CO2

Too much CO2 in the air is currently causing a major problem: climate change. If it were up to Peyman Taheri, researcher at Materials Science and Engineering at TU Delft, we would be making smart use of surplus CO2 by converting it into a new fuel. A fuel that could power factories and send cars hurtling down the motorway.

Reading time: 4 min

The urban puzzle of where to put a million solar panels

A million solar panels on the rooftops of Amsterdam? How do you get that done? Researcher Maarten Verkou figured it out.

reading time: 4 min

Breaking habits for a green world

We separate our waste, take shorter showers and there has been an increase in roof-mounted solar panels. Climate psychologist at TU Delft Gerdien de Vries, sees that in the Netherlands we are trying to put our greenest foot forward.

Watching time: 12 min

Lights of the Lake

Four designers from Delft University of Technology travelled to Lake Victoria, Tanzania and partnered with Sagar Energy Solutions to design a solar-powered fishing lamp for the night fishing industry. This effort aims to put an end to the reliance on dangerous and expensive kerosene lanterns.

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reading time: 10 min

The battle of the Amsterdam quayside bulge

The canals and quaysides in historic cities such as Amsterdam, Delft and Utrecht make a pretty picture. In order for these often busy cities to remain safe, the quay walls, some over 300 years old and built on wooden piles, need to be well maintained. But which ones to tackle first? And which quay walls still pass the test? PhD candidate Mart-Jan Hemel is investigating the condition of these centuries old quay walls by doing exactly what the local authorities are trying to prevent: put pressure on them until they collapse.

reading time: min

Building differently to combat aircraft noise

Aircraft noise around airports is a major problem, and a persistent one. Researcher Martijn Lugten asked himself whether the way we build houses might hold the key to solving this problem.

Collection Climate Action

reading time: 5 min

Compact nature for the compact city

Urban dwellers need green public spaces. To put oxygen in their lungs and improve their mental health. To capture carbon dioxide and mitigate extreme weather. To ensure balance between the built and the natural environments. But in densely built-up cities there is little space for greenery at ground level. So, what can be done about this? For his graduation project, Menno de Roode studied and designed compact urban public green spaces: “Following nature as far as possible enables you to avoid unnecessary maintenance and management.”

reading time: 4 min

Shelf-stocking robot working independently

A robot that helps store employees by moving independently through the supermarket and shelving products in their proper place. According to researcher Carlos Hernández Corbato of the Department of Cognitive Robotics, this may be possible in the future. But the robot must be able to adapt to the dynamic and challenging conditions in a supermarket.

reading time: 10 min

Innovation needs a place to grow

Mitigating the impact of climate change, facilitating the energy transition, solving the housing crisis… The built environment needs to address pretty big challenges, which ask for innovative solutions. Students at the Faculty of Architecture and the Built Environment have plenty of good ideas to create the necessary innovations, but how can their ideas successfully evolve?

reading time: 4, 5 min

With each other, for each other

Building more homes without rethinking the way we live together will not solve the fundamental issues with the housing crisis. Besides more quality homes for lower and middle incomes, we also need housing solutions that are sustainable, foster strong social connections and are affordable.

reading time: 5 min

The wind app that puts the wind in your sails

Catching the breeze may bring you gold but sail too close to the wind and you’ll miss the boat. Combined with a sailor’s intuition meteorologist Sukanta Basu’s highly detailed wind forecast may well help the Dutch sailing team secure a win at the Olympics this year.

Collection Climate Action

reading time: 5 min

Sand on the horizon

It’s a decade since the creation of the Sand Motor, an artificial sand bank off the North Sea coast. What happens to a natural system following human intervention on such a large scale.

reading time: 9 min

‘As a student, you simply cannot get closer to the professional field’

Fitting new infrastructure into our densely built-up country is becoming increasingly complex. The Integrated Infrastructure Design minor teaches students how to handle this complexity. “This helps us to train a completely different type of engineer,” says minor coordinator Hans de Boer.

reading time: min

A giant pink rabbit on Grote Markt

A 7 metre tall pink origami rabbit has hopped its way over to the Grote Markt, making Delft’s living room its temporary hutch from May 30. The animal was designed with the Delft Fringe Festival in mind by two TU Delft computer science students. ‘We were positively shocked when we heard that we, two computer science students, had come up with the winner,’ Bartek Kotlicki from Poland and Irishman Ben Provan-Bessell said.

reading time: 5 min

Safety in numbers in times of Corona? There can be.

When did we last dance at a pop festival, cheer on our favourite football team or get together with friends for a meal at a restaurant? It all seems an eternity ago. Dorine Duives misses the crowds as well, and not just for the atmosphere. As a TU Delft researcher Duives studies pedestrian crowd behaviour and the arrival of coronavirus and the 1.5 metre society has made her expertise more relevant than ever. As the crisis developed, the focus of her research became firmly centred on safe ways of opening up society again.

reading time: 5 min

Sweet solutions to a salty problem

Some sixty kilometres, all the way up to Gouda, that’s how far inland the Rotterdam Waterway has been carrying salty North Sea water over the last few years.
Salt intrusion in Dutch rivers is a growing problem for the country’s drinking water supply and agriculture, not only in the Dutch delta but in deltas worldwide. Julie Pietrzak is trying to find better ways of predicting and combating the problem.

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reading time: 4 min

Dutch lessons in the Chinese Pearl River Delta

The Pearl River Delta in the province of Guangdong in southern China is one of the most rapidly urbanising deltas in the world. More than sixty million people now live in an area approximately half the size of the Netherlands. The pace of developments, combined with the consequences of climate change, are creating a complex set of issues. How can a small country like the Netherlands help out?

reading time: min

Hit the roads safely with autonomous vehicles

When the time comes for autonomous cars to hit the roads, they’ll have to take other road users into account. For example, they’ll need to stop when a cyclist abruptly turns. Laura Ferranti is studying how this can be best achieved. Even when roads are packed with traffic.

reading time: 5 min

Good vibrations? Not for bridges

Due to poor monitoring, many structures are not maintained properly or on time. This results in safety risks and high costs for overdue maintenance. Researcher Alice Cicirello is working on better design and monitoring tools to ensure the secure construction of structures to extend their service life.

reading time: 5 min

Getting it straight: bridges are becoming circular

A large number of bridges in the Netherlands are scheduled for large-scale maintenance work or replacement. In order to minimise the effect on the environment and bring down costs researcher Wenjun Cao is working on a model to assess the potential for circularity of these bridges. This will help the Netherlands to achieve its aim of a fully Circular Economy (CE) by 2050.

reading time: 4 min

Help from on high to solve earthly problems

The ground beneath our feet is constantly moving and that can compromise the stability of buildings and infrastructure. Satellite data are helping Giorgia Giardina to chart the impact of subsurface activity on buildings in great detail so efficient measures to limit damage, cost and safety risks can be taken before it’s too late.

leestijd: 4 min

Op digitaal ziekenbezoek in Reinier de Graaf dankzij Delftse studenten

Vanwege strikte coronarichtlijnen is het voor veel patiënten in het Reinier de Graaf niet mogelijk om bezoek te ontvangen. Door alle drukte in het ziekenhuis kunnen verplegers oudere of zwakkere patiënten niet altijd helpen contact te hebben met hun naasten via welbekende middelen als WhatsApp of Skype. Delftse studenten ontwikkelden een tool die patiënt en familie toch bij elkaar brengt én het zorgpersoneel ontlast.

reading time: 3 min

Aerospace students revive Leonardo da Vinci’s aerial screw (and turn it into an electric personal aerial vehicle for today)

In the midst of the corona pandemic, five aerospace engineering students from Delft University of Technology designed a vertical take-off and landing vehicle based on Leonardo da Vinci’s Aerial Screw and demonstrated its feasibility and physics.

reading time: 3 min

Campus mobility dashboard to monitor crowd behavior at TU Delft

For years, Distinguished Professor Smart Urban Mobility Serge Hoogendoorn had been dreaming of a sensor network for research into traffic flows. The fact that it would happen on the TU Delft campus was never part of the dream. A perfect case of “never waste a good crisis”.

reading time: min

From the plane into the train

reading time: 5 min

Sand on the horizon

reading time: min

The coming age of ‘solar everywhere’

Floating wind turbines change everything

reading time: 4 min

Using artificial intelligence to eye the quantum computer

reading time: 10 min

The battle of the Amsterdam quayside bulge

reading time: 5 min

TU Delft and Intel drink a toast to the qubit

reading time: min

Deep learning for complex networks

reading time: 4 min

CO₂ is not a waste product but a raw material!

reading time: min

Improving biotech production with real-time testing

reading time: 4 min

Turning the tide of the big box warehouse landscape

reading time: 5 min

From CO2 to plastics and laptops

reading time: 7 min

Algorithms: can you trust them or not? - TU Delft Story - Technology, Policy & Management

reading time: 10 min

Synthetic data for a clean digital future

reading time: 4 min

Fuel cells for zero-emission shipping

reading time: 6 min

Taking wind energy research to new heights with open-source software

reading time: 4 min

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

reading time: 5 min

The magic of catalysis for CO2 conversion

reading time: min

Inverse modelling – for improved medical imaging and much more

reading time: 6 min

Solving the worldwide bottleneck in nuclear medicine

reading time: 6 min

Delft researcher streamlines the path to Olympic success

leestijd: 9 min

A geothermal research well on TU Delft's premises
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