Behind the scenes, our MCEC Demonstrator Teams have been working thoroughly on their projects. To give you a glimpse of what waits ahead, we visited each team this summer to get a better understanding of their project, their goals and expectations.
Pyrolystrator
Christia Jabbour, Ina Vollmer, Michael Jenks, Ferdy Coumans, Jérôme Simons, and Dr. Florian Meirer
With the growing environmental concerns of plastic waste, new methodologies are needed to reduce mankind’s impact on nature. Plastics waste is considered a huge burden on our society due to its chemical inertness. Pyrolysis, the thermal breaking of molecules, is a suitable method to “cut” these long polymer chains into suitable molecules for the production of fuels or chemical building blocks. In this project, we demonstrate this concept to an audience, a compact and mobile setup will be used to highlight the fundamental principles of polymer pyrolysis. The potential of plastic pyrolysis and the necessity to utilize new approaches to reduce CO2 emissions and lower our impact on the environment are highlighted with this demonstrator.
Catalysis: Storing Green Energy for the Future
Romy Riemersma, Roos Krösschell, Akash Raman, Francesco Cannizzaro, Jochem van Duin, and Dr. Ward van der Stam and Dr. Mathieu Odijk
Electrons generated from various clean energy sources such as solar and wind can be converted into other forms of energy. We can store this energy in the chemical bonds in molecules such as hydrogen. We demonstrate the fundamentals behind this transformation in a fun, visually engaging way by bringing the whole process to your table top. With our demonstrator you can see your own work generating clean hydrogen right before your eyes.
Source: website MCEC