Several carbon-neutral towns are investigating novel technological solutions to enable a green energy transition that incorporates increasing proportions of locally generated energy. More efficient integrated energy solutions for electricity, heat, water, waste, and transportation infrastructure must …

Plastic is one of the biggest contributors to pollution of the planet. Due to the low recyclability of oil-based plastics, most plastic is being disposed into the environment. According to plastic oceans, 10 million tons of plastic are dumped into oceans annually. Currently, researchers are developing …

Bulk molding compound (BMC) thermoset (bio) composites are difficult to recycle because they cannot be melted for reprocessing. However, this group of materials is often used in high-end applications where strength and lightweight materials are required, such as boat hulls, aircraft parts, car parts, …

In practice, faults in building installations are seldom noticed because automated systems to diagnose such faults are not common use, despite many proposed methods: they are cumbersome to apply and not matching the way of thinking of HVAC engineers. Additionally, fault diagnosis and energy performance …

This is a serious game called Re-Organise. It is a cooperative board game about creating closed loops in the circular economy. The game represents an agro-industrial park in which different types of companies aim to use each other's waste streams as a material and/or energy resource. To do so, the players …

Industrial Symbiosis Networks (ISNs) consist of firms that exchange residual materials and energy locally, in order to gain economic, environmental and/or social advantages. In practice, ISNs regularly fail when partners leave and the recovery of residual streams ends. Regarding the current societal …

Around 60% of drinking water in the Netherlands is from groundwater, often containing high concentrations of dissolved iron. This is generally removed by aeration, which is an important process in both drinking- and waste water treatment. The known disadvantages are high energy consumption relative to …

The Netherlands has a mission to use 16% of sustainable energy by 2023, and 100% of sustainable energy by 2050, thus making green energy to be the only source of energy in the future. Foundation Loswal “De Bonnen” has 17.5 hectares of raw land where they want to develop a digester. The aim of this paper …

By 2050, the world population will have increased to 9 billion (Bongaarts, 2009). This increase will lead to significant growth in waste. Construction is one of the largest raw material users (Bribian et al., 2011), and this sector consumes about 40% of the energy-related CO2 emissions (Dean et al., …

This dissertation explores the role of higher education institutions (HEIs) regarding sustainability. Firstly, it defines key terms, namely sustainability and green strategy. To further investigate what green strategies are, a few examples of sustainable strategies will be given. Subsequently, a timeline …