Search results

Concerns of Owner‐Occupants in Realising the Aims of Energy Transition

Although there is an array of technical solutions available for retrofitting the building stock, the uptake of these by owner‐occupants in home improvement activities is lagging. Energy performance improvement is not included in maintenance, redecoration, and/or upgrading activities on a scale necessary to achieve the CO2 reduction aimed for in the built environment. Owner‐occupants usually adapt their homes in response to everyday concerns, such as having enough space available, increasing comfort levels, or adjusting arrangements to future‐proof their living conditions. Home energy improvements should be offered accordingly. Retrofit providers typically offer energy efficiency strategies and/or options for renewable energy generation only and tend to gloss over home comfort and homemaking as key considerations in decision‐making for home energy improvement. In fact, retrofit providers struggle with the tension between customisation requirements from private homeowners and demand aggregation to streamline their supply chains and upscale their retrofit projects. Customer satisfaction is studied in three different Dutch approaches to retrofit owner‐occupied dwellings to increase energy efficiency. For the analysis, a customer satisfaction framework is used that makes a distinction between satisfiers, dissatisfiers, criticals, and neutrals. This framework makes it possible to identify and structure different relevant factors from the perspective of owner‐occupants, allows visualising gaps with the professional perspective, and can assist to improve current propositions.

Towards 100% Renewable Energy: Democratizing the Energy Market with Energy Commons

µPlasma Patterning and Inkjet Printing to enhance localized wetting and mixing behaviour

With a market demand for low cost, easy to produce, flexible and portable applications in healthcare, energy, biomedical or electronics markets, large research programs are initiated to develop new technologies to provide this demand with new innovative ideas. One of these fast developing technologies is organic printed electronics. As the term printed electronics implies, functional materials are printed via, e.g. inkjet, flexo or gravure printing techniques, on to a substrate material. Applications are, among others, organic light emitting diodes (OLED), sensors and Lab-on-a-chip devices. For all these applications, in some way, the interaction of fluids with the substrate is of great importance. The most used substrate materials for these low-cost devices are (coated) paper or plastic. Plastic substrates have a relatively low surface energy which frequently leads to poor wetting and/or poor adhesion of the fluids on the substrates during printing and/ or post-processing. Plasma technology has had a long history in treating materials in order to improve wetting or promote adhesion. The µPlasma patterning tool described in this thesis combines a digital inkjet printing platform with an atmospheric dielectric barrier discharge plasma tool. Thus enabling selective and local plasma treatment, at atmospheric pressure, of substrates without the use of any masking materials. In this thesis, we show that dependent on the gas composition the substrate surface can either be functionalized, thus increasing its surface energy, or material can be deposited on the surface, lowering its surface energy. Through XPS and ATR-FTIR analysis of the treated (polymer) substrate surfaces, chemical modification of the surface structure was confirmed. The chemical modification and wetting properties of the treated substrates remained present for at least one month after storage. Localized changes in wettability through µPlasma patterning were obtained with a resolution of 300µm. Next to the control of wettability of an ink on a substrate in printed electronics is the interaction of ink droplets with themselves of importance. In printing applications, coalescence of droplets is standard practice as consecutive droplets are printed onto, or close to each other. Understanding the behaviour of these droplets upon coalescence is therefore important, especially when the ink droplets are of different composition and/or volume. For droplets of equal volume, it was found that dye transport across the coalescence bridge could be fully described by diffusion only. This is as expected, as due to the droplet symmetry on either side of the bridge, the convective flows towards the bridge are of equal size but opposite in direction. For droplets of unequal volume, the symmetry across the bridge is no longer present. Experimental analysis of these merging droplets show that in the early stages of coalescence a convective flow from the small to large droplet is present. Also, a smaller convective flow of shorter duration from the large into the small droplet was identified. The origin of this flow might be due to the presence of vortices along the interface of the bridge, due to the strong transverse flow to open the bridge. To conclude, three potential applications were showcased. In the first application we used µPlasma patterning to create hydrophilic patterns on hydrophobic dodecyl-trichlorosilane (DTS) covered glass. Capillaries for a Lab-on-a-chip device were successfully created by placing two µPlasma patterned glass slides on top of each other separated by scotch tape. In the second application we showcased the production of a RFID tag via inkjet printing. Functional RFID-tags on paper were created via inkjet printing of silver nanoparticle ink connected to an integrated circuit. The optimal operating frequency of the produced tags is in the range of 860-865 MHz, making them usable for the European market, although the small working range of 1 m needs further improvement. Lastly, we showed the production of a chemresistor based gas sensor. In house synthesised polyemeraldine salt (PANi) was coated by hand on top of inkjet printed silver electrodes. The sensor proved to be equally sensitive to ethanol and water vapour, reducing its selectivity in detecting changes in gas composition.

Smart buildings & interfaces for managers of buildings and facilities, and intelligence needed for occupant-HVAC interfaces at room level

B4B is a multi-year, multi-stakeholder project focused on developing methods to harness big data from smart meters, building management systems and the Internet of Things devices, to reduce energy consumption, increase comfort, respond flexibly to user behaviour and local energy supply and demand, and save on installation maintenance costs. This will be done through the development of faster and more efficient Machine Learning and Artificial Intelligence models and algorithms. The project is geared to existing utility buildings such as commercial and institutional buildings.

Strategic competences for concrete action towards sustainability: : An oxymoron?

In the current discourses on sustainable development, one can discern two main intellectual cultures: an analytic one focusing on measuring problems and prioritizing measures, (Life Cycle Analysis (LCA), Mass Flow Analysis (MFA), etc.) and; a policy/management one, focusing on long term change, change incentives, and stakeholder management (Transitions/niches, Environmental economy, Cleaner production). These cultures do not often interact and interactions are often negative. However, both cultures are required to work towards sustainability solutions: problems should be thoroughly identified and quantified, options for large change should be guideposts for action, and incentives should be created, stakeholders should be enabled to participate and their values and interests should be included in the change process. The paper deals especially with engineering education. Successful technological change processes should be supported by engineers who have acquired strategic competences. An important barrier towards training academics with these competences is the strong disciplinarism of higher education. Raising engineering students in strong disciplinary paradigms is probably responsible for their diminishing public engagement over the course of their studies. Strategic competences are crucial to keep students engaged and train them to implement long term sustainable solutions.

Green-washing or best case practices?

Closed loop or ‘circular’ production systems known as Circular Economy and Cradle to Cradle represent a unique opportunity to radically revise the currently wasteful system of production. One of the challenges of such systems is that circular products need to be both produced locally with minimum environmental footprint and simultaneously satisfy demand of global consumers. This article presents a literature review that describes the application of circular methodologies to education for sustainability, which has been slow to adopt circular systems to the curriculum. This article discusses how Bachelor and Master-level students apply their understanding of these frameworks to corporate case studies. Two assignment-related case studies are summarized, both of which analyze products that claim to be 'circular'. The students' research shows that the first case, which describes the impact of a hybrid material soda bottle, does not meet circularity criteria. The second case study, which describes products and applications of a mushroom-based material, is more sustainable. However, the students' research shows that the manufacturers have omitted transport from the environmental impact assessment and therefore the mushroom materials may not be as sustainable as the manufacturers claim. As these particular examples showed students how green advertising can be misleading, applying “ideal” circularity principles as part of experiential learning could strengthen the curriculum. Additionally, this article recommends that sustainable business curriculum should also focus on de-growth and steady-state economy, with these radical alternatives to production becoming a central focus of education of responsible citizens. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jclepro.2019.02.005 LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/helenkopnina/