On the 8th of October 2015, the first KIVI Innovation Drinks Twente of the new academic year took place in the The Gallery at the University of Twente. The doors opened at 16.00h, with the first speaker scheduled at 16.30h. The theme of this Innovation Drinks was 'Sustainable Energy'.
A large part of the Green Team Twente was present with their new hydrogen car ('H2Zero'), which attracted much attention from the visitors in the hallway of The Gallery. It was nice to see that the members of the team were very eager to answer difficult questions about the car and the goals of the team and to explain the workings of the different parts of the cars.
After everyone had taken their seats and the chairman of KIVI Students Twente had welcomed everyone, Ymiel van der Zanden came to the front to give the first presentation. In about half an hour he spoke about the accomplishments of Green Team Twente, the main aspects and workings of a hydrogen car and the advantages and disadvantages of hydrogen as main source of energy in our cars compared to other type of (future) systems. The H2Zero is believed to have an efficiency of the equivalence of around 1000 km/L in terms of conventional liters of gasoline, although (mainly due to the problems at this year's Shell Eco Marathon) the team didn't have a chance to test this yet. The last part of Ymiel's talk addressed his view on the future of the automobile industry and what would be the best future propulsion system. He argued that in a lot of ways hydrogen cars are in fact safer compared to conventional gasoline cars and also compared to electric cars. With respect to the electric cars, hydrogen cars also have important advantages in that it is much faster to fill up the system and that the required infrastructure of fueling stations is very similar to the current one for gasoline (which makes, as Ymiel and the Green Team have experienced also for themselves, that the mighty petrol industry is more willing to adapt to hydrogen).
The second speaker of the afternoon was Ruud Meulenbroek of the company BTC-BTL. This company fabricates pyrolysis oil out of biomass. Ruud explained what pyrolysis is, what the main aspects of the set up are and what the output and efficiency of their system is (around 89% for dry biomass and around 85% for wet biomass). For example, apart from oil, the electricity and steam produced in the process is recycled in the system and sold (respectively). In Hengelo, a large production plant was built in 2014, which runs on the principles developed by BTC-BTL (which started as a spin-off company of the University of Twente) since the early nineties. BTC-BTL has determined 95% of all types of biomass to be suitable for pyrolysis in their production plant in Hengelo.
After the talks, the consecutive network drinks were a good opportunity to talk some more with Ruud and with the members of Green Team Twente. Altogether, the afternoon could be described as both gezellig and informing. On Thursday the 3th of December, the next edition of the KIVI Innovation Drinks Twente is scheduled. The theme of this afternoon will be 'Robotics'.