Sustainability

The biobased materials that will be used in industry more and more, have a major disadvantage: they mainly consist of water. Evaporating seems the most simple remedy, but this is very energy-inefficient: typically something you would like to avoid when making processes more sustainable. There are, however, other options that are driven by electricity and don’t have the need of warming the full volume of the material. Examples are hydrogels and membranes. In the project ELECTRIFIED, the University of Twente together with four other universities and eight companies, will explore these ‘electric dewatering’ technology. They expect to reach a decrease in energy consumption of 50 to 90 per cent.

Green Team Twente has presented its new hydrogen-powered car to the public. This year, the student team is focusing for the first time on building the only Formula Student car powered by hydrogen. The team hopes that this will make people enthusiastic about the possibilities of hydrogen and show that sustainable technologies are anything but boring.

Waste separation bins have been placed on four locations on campus. Until now, waste separation was only possible indoors on campus. At the new bins, you can separate your PMD, paper and residual waste. The bins can be found at the O&O square, in front of the Coop supermarket, next to the sports centre and next to the beach volleyball sports field. In the future, more locations may be added.

The University of Twente wants to reduce the CO2 emissions caused by air travel. That is why the UT introduces the Train Zone Map: a map of destinations which makes it easy to compare travel by train and plane. Not only the CO2 emissions, but also the total travel time and the number of transfers can be compared. With the tool, the UT wants to encourage its staff and students to choose the train over the plane whenever possible. ’For short distances, the train is the norm'.