MECS | News

October 2018

Nigerian LNG science Award 2018 - Peter Ngene (former postdoc MECS)

NLNG (Nigerian Liquid Natural Gas) plc announced that Peter Ngene is the winner of this year Nigerian science award (US$ 100,000,- ). The official award ceremony will be in week 42, 2018 at Lagos -Nigeria. The award panel believed that his work on energy storage and sensors (the latter is done at TU Delft) is something that can be of great benefit to the Nigeria and African energy sector. NLNG is one of the biggest natural gas company in Africa, and Shell owns about 20 % of it. 

 

July 2017 

 Two recent papers from our group in Nature Communications:

  1. ‘Interfacial engineering of metal-insulator-semiconductor junctions for efficient and stable photoelectrochemical water oxidation’ by Ibadillah A. Digdaya et al., see: https://www.nature.com/articles/ncomms15968
  2. ‘Hafnium—an optical hydrogen sensor spanning six orders in pressure’ by Christiaan Boelsma, see https://www.nature.com/articles/ncomms15718

The MECS Battolyser paper is published as HOT paper in Energy & Environmetal Science

http://pubs.rsc.org/en/content/articlelanding/2017/ee/c6ee02923j#!divAbstract

 

February 2015 

VSParticle wins startup-program MIT at E-Forum

YES!Delft company VSParticle (Aaike van Vugt and Tobias Pfeiffer) has won the STARTUP Competition during the busy E-Forum. This competition is a collaboration between Delft University of Technology and MIT to encourage entrepreneurship. The winners of the competition will be fully sponsored to go to MIT for three months this summer to take part in the Global Founders’ Skills Accelerator. For more information: http://www.yesdelft.nl/Now-at-YES-Delft/News/article-detail/Article/vsparticle-wins-startupprogram-mit

 

 January 2015

Hydrogen Science and Technology award for Bernard Dam 

Bernard Dam was awarded with the 'Hydrogen Science and Technology award' during the 9th International Symposium 'Hydrogen & Energy' in Emmetten, Switzerland.

 

December 2014 

Fokko Mulder and Thomas van Dijk in 'EenVandaag' - Dutch television program

Edison accu maakt comeback

 

 

VSParticle wins Validation Voucher

VSParticle (Aaike van Vugt, Tobias Pfeiffer, Andreas Schmidt-Ott) won a Validation Voucher of Climate-KIC (10.000,-) during the CleanTech Business Day with the presentation of their business plan (Startup Pitch Competition).

November 2014

Aaike van Vugt and Tobias Pfeiffer received New Venture prize

Aaike van Vugt and Postdoc Tobias Pfeiffer received a New Venture prize of Euro 500,- with their company VSParticle. According to the jury their idea was one of the best ideas of the first rounds.

 

September 2014 

Dr. Anne Maisser received Erwin Schrodinger Fellowship   

Dr. Anne Maisser, who worked as a post-doc within MECS for more than 2 years, received a prestigious Erwin SchrÓ§dinger Fellowship from the Austrian Science Foundation. This grant will enable her to be her own boss for 2 years on a faculty salary and to work at research institutions of her choice. At ChemE, she did significant research on using sparks to produce nanoparticles and sub-nanometer metallic clusters from the gas phase and pioneering work on applying them for nucleation studies. Anne will use the grant to continue the atomic cluster research at the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis and at the University of Vienna, Austria.

 

Article in 'Chemisch2Weekblad' 

News article in C2W (in Dutch): http://www.c2w.nl/teflon-versterkt-palladium.383767.lynkx.

June 2014

Fatwa Abdi received the Martinus van Marum prize

Fatwa Abdi received the Martinus van Marum Prize for his PhD thesis "Towards highly efficient bias-free solar water splitting".
More information: http://www.khmw.nl/actueel/j-c-ruigrok-stichting-bekroont-drie-proefschriften/157

 

May 2014

Best Poster Award for Moreno de Respinis

Moreno de Respinis has won the Best Poster Award (1st prize) at the PhD Poster Event of the DEI Delft Energy Initiative. 
Link to his winning poster

 

April 2014

Bernard Dam awarded with STW-OTP grant 

Bernard Dam was recently awarded an STW-OTP grant of 480000 euro to investigate visible-light-induced photochromic thin films for smart window applications. The YOxHy-based materials are remarkable since they do not depend on UV light to obtain a uniform darkening. 

 
Yingying Luo wins ECHO-award 2014

This year’s ECHO award for excellent ethnic talent in Science and Technology went to Yingying Luo. Born in China, Luo is now studying Sustainable Energy Technology and Chemical Engineering: "Winning the award is not only a recognition of my talents and achievements, it is primarily a recognition of what a Chinese immigrant can achieve in a foreign country."
http://www.echo-net.nl/

 

   


Fatwa Abdi will receive the Van Marum prize

Fatwa Abdi will receive the Van Marum prize (http://www.khmw.nl/prijzen/prijs/martinus-van-marum-prijs/) for his thesis (Towards highly efficient bias-free solar water splitting).

 

February 2014

Patent: "Spark Ablation Device"

An invention from Chemical Engineering on a nanoparticle production method has been added to the TU Delft Patent Portfolio. The patent application is entitled “Spark Ablation Device”, and the inventors are Tobias Pfeiffer and Andreas Schmidt-Ott. To learn more, follow the link.

January 2014 

Paper Peter Ngene in newsmagazine Chemical Engineering News

Peter Ngene's paper Seeing Hydrogen in Colors: Low-Cost and Highly Sensitive Eye Readable Hydrogen Detectors  has been selected for a short report in Newsmagazine Chemical Engineering News, a weekly science newsmagazine published by the American Chemical Society.

  

Abstract Aaike van Vugt selected for presentation at NCCC-XV congress

The abstract of Aaike van Vugt is selected by KNCV Catalysis Section for presentation at NCCC-XV congress.
Abstract title: A clean and flexible method of catalyst synthesis by efficient deposition of nanoparticles on electrospun nanofibres.

 

 
November 2013

Research into solar-to-hydrogen conversion rewarded

More information: http://www.tudelft.nl/en/current/latest-news/article/detail/onderzoek-zon-naar-waterstofconversie-gehonoreerd/

 


Cover artwork Julien Gaury and George Biskos on the cover of next issue CrystEngComm

The editor of the CrystEngComm journal decided to feature the paper and artwork of Julien Gaury and George Biskos on the cover of their next issue.  http://pubs.rsc.org/en/content/articlelanding/2014/ce/c3ce42078g#!divAbstract

 

 

September 2013

Fatwa Abdi has been awarded "Cum Laude"  

Fatwa Abdi has been awarded the grade of Excellent “cum laude” for his PhD thesis 'TOWARDS HIGHLY EFFICIENT BIAS-FREE SOLAR WATER SPLITTING'

 

Tim Zaman invited speaker at 'Digital Heritage 2013'  

PhD student Tim Zaman has been invited as Young Innovator Keynote Speaker at the 'Digital Heritage 2013 conference' in Marseille. More information about his recent research: http://www.nu.nl/tech/3584817/nederlander-3d-print-werken-van-meesterschilders.html (in Dutch).


August 2013

Veni Grant for Wilson Smith

The Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research (NWO) has awarded a Veni grant to scientist Wilson Smith. The NWO grant offers him the possibility of developing his own line of research and building his own research group. Wilson Smith belongs to the top ten to twenty per cent of his field. The grant will be used to help him develop his ideas and carry out research in the next three years. He was selected on the basis of his outstanding talent for conducting innovative scientific research. The grant amounts to 250,000 euros. 
Wilson Smith: "Solar fuels for a sustainable future.  Solar water splitting uses two of Earths greatest and most abundant resources to produce hydrogen, which can be used as an environmentally benign replacement for fossil fuels. In order to make this process sustainable, robust, and scalable for the long term future, the materials used to catalyze the water splitting reaction need to be made from cheap and Earth abundant elements. This project seeks to investigate metal oxide semiconductors made from materials that are amply found in nature such as copper, oxygen and nitrogen. The performance limitations for these metal oxides will be systematically identified and improved using several techniques such as elemental doping and metal alloying".


July 2013

Record solar-to-hydrogen conversion device from Fatwa Abdi et al. published in Nature communication

Record solar-to-hydrogen conversion device from Fatwa Abdi et al. published in Nature communication. See also the press release.
  


May 2013

Jicheng Feng received Graduate of Shanghai Outstanding Achievement Award

Jicheng Feng, PhD student in the section MECS, has received the 2012 Graduate of Shanghai Outstanding Achievement Award for his Master thesis, which he completed at Shanghai University of Engineering Science. The thesis is entitled ”Studies on Nickel Based Electrode Materials for Supercapacitors”. This award is conferred only to 1 student among 1000.


The fastest student Puneet Kedia went green

Puneet Kedia, who did his Master Thesis at NSM/MECS required only 18 months (instead of 24) to obtain his Master’s degree within the program Sustainable Energy Technology (SET). As the fastest student of the year, he received the respective recognition at the SET Diploma Ceremony. In spite of this short time, he did significant work on developing a “green” precursor-free method of producing core-shell structured nanoparticles within his thesis. A publication is in preparation. 

Tim Zaman interviewed by the BBC

Tim Zaman, a PhD student of MECS, developed a method of scanning paintings in 3 dimensions, so that the painting can be printed in a 3-D printer. A van Gogh, reproduced this way, is indistinguishable from the original, even for an expert. The only way to see the difference is to magnify the surface, so that the pixels become visible. Tim is now busy with developing a method that can “see” a millimeter deep into a non-metal material. This will be useful for archaeologists, art historians as well as material engineers. Together with Joris Dik and Maarten Jansen (Leiden), the objective is to see hidden layers of pre-Columbian Mexican artefacts and paintings by old masters that have been painted over by the artist – and then to print them out! Tim was recently interviewed by the BBC a few days before re-opening of the Rijksmuseum. Via the link http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=er5N1Zv3oac the interview can be seen.

January 2013

Award Hans Geerlings and poster prize Moreno de Respinis

Hans Geerlings received the ‘Science of hydrogen and energy’ award 2013 for his outstanding work on the hydrogen production and storage, as well as his effort to open new fields in a world leading oil producing company at the 7th International Hydrogen and Energy Symposium in Stoos, Switzerland.
At the same conference Moreno de Respinis obtained the poster prize for his poster: Optimization of the anneal procedure in metal oxides: case study of nanostructured tungsten processed via low-energy helium ions.

February 2012

Maarten de Nier wins Shell Master Award 2011 

Maarten de Nier has won the Shell Master Award 2011 with his MSc thesis:  “Photoelectrochemical hydrogen production – thin film bismuth ferrite as photo-electrode material”. He did this work in the Materials for Energy Conversion and Storage group of the Chemical Engineering department. The MECS group is very proud of Maarten's achievement and warmly congratulates him with this prestigious award!  

 

For further information on the thesis subject, please contact Dr. R. van de Krol


December 2011 

New book on solar hydrogen production, edited by Roel van de Krol (ChemE-MECS) and Michael Grätzel

This new book, titled “Photoelectrochemical hydrogen production”, describes the principles and materials challenges for the conversion of sunlight into hydrogen through water splitting at a semiconducting electrode. Apart from three chapters by Van de Krol, it includes contributions from Kevin Sivula, Kazuhiro Sayama, Bruce Parkinson, Eric Miller, Scott Warren, Julian Keable, and other experts in the field. More information can be found on the Springer website: www.springer.com/engineering/energy+technology/book/978-1-4614-1379-0. The book is also available on Amazon.com.

 


February 2011

Aletta Kaas wins Shell Bachelor Award 2010

Aletta Kaas has won the Shell Bachelor Award 2010 with her BSc thesis “Anodic alumina templates for nanostructured iron oxide”. She did this work in the Materials for Energy Conversion and Storage group of the ChemE department. The aim of her work was to make nanowires of iron oxide (‘rust’) that can be used to convert water and sunlight into a clean solar fuel, hydrogen. The MECS group is very proud of Aletta’s achievement and warmly congratulates her with this prestigious award!

 

For further information on the thesis subject, please contact Dr. R. van de Krol