idw – Informationsdienst Wissenschaft
Nachrichten, Termine, Experten
Nachrichten, Termine, Experten
TU Berlin involved in 4 of 72 funded projects across Europe
Smart Energy Solutions for Africa (SESA): The work of SESA’s 30 project partners will be coordinated at the administrative level by Bonn-based global urban network ICLEI and at the technical level by TU Berlin. The project will be led by Dr. Oliver Lah, head of the Urban Change Maker Group at Professor Philipp Misselwitz’s Habitat Unit in cooperation with the United Nation’s Habitat program and the Wuppertal Institute. SESA will pursue a three-pronged approach to test out model projects developed in different African countries to examine their suitability for the continent’s other regions and implement promising concepts in as many areas as possible. The first phase will start in Kenya, where projects include using water hyacinths from Lake Victoria to produce biogas. Farmers in the region clear water hyacinths over large areas, as they are an invasive species harmful to biodiversity. Other subprojects include the recycling of lithium-ion batteries and using solar lamps to provide street lighting. The main focus in this first phase of the project will be on improving technical and economic aspects.
“In the second phase, we will be examining whether these business models are also suitable for geographically and socio-economically different regions such as Ghana, South Africa, Malawi, and Morocco and can thus provide blueprints for transformative energy solutions,” explains Lah. During the project, a toolkit consisting of training documents, business models, and life cycle assessments will be developed to test out the transferability of concepts in Namibia, Tanzania, Rwanda, and Nigeria working with local partners.
Developing flexible gas turbines for hydrogen and biogas
Bio-FlexGen: This project will combine the transformation of hydrogen produced using green energy sources, such as solar or wind power, and biomass into electrical energy and heating. Green hydrogen is seen as a key technology in stabilizing electrical grids and decarbonizing the power sector. Bio-FlexGen will develop a gas turbine technology to enable the use of hydrogen to achieve a quick balance of load changes in the electrical grid as well as the use of biomass for an efficient conversion to gas at low operating costs. The high level of efficiency resulting from the use of biomass in this power plant will potentially achieve a three-fold increase in electrical output with the same thermal output when compared with existing thermal power stations. In addition, the plant also enables operation with up to 100% hydrogen to achieve significantly higher levels of efficiency than before. The Chair of Fluid Mechanics led by Professor Christian Oliver Paschereit will develop a solution to ensure that the combustion chamber, very much the heart of the gas turbine, will be able to cope with the changing composition of the biogas and the use of hydrogen. This is a new requirement which no existing gas turbine has yet achieved. The project coordinator for Bio-FlexGen is the Swedish research organization RISE.
Involving the public in new formats
Real_Deal: The focus here is on the active involvement of members of the public throughout Europe in the entire Green Deal program. The project will be coordinated from Brussels by the European Environmental Bureau, Europe’s largest civil society environmental network. Project partner at TU Berlin is the Chair of Work, Technology, and Participation (ArTe) led by Professor Hans-Liudger Dienel. Dienel’s team will focus on citizen committees – randomly composed participation committees – comparing their different formats and analyzing Green Deal-relevant stakeholders and their relationships to each other. Real_Deal will enable physical and virtual town hall meetings in at least 13 European countries and use these to develop recommendations for other similar events. The objective is to create a broad base for the Green Deal program through the involvement of members of the public. The project will also focus on gender equality and the inclusion of young people and marginalized groups.
For more information, please contact:
ENERGICA:
Prof. Dr. Boris Heinz
Chair of Decarbonized Energy Systems
Technische Universität Berlin
Tel.: +49 (0)30 314 21710
E-Mail: b.heinz@tu-berlin.de
Smart Energy Solutions for Africa (SESA):
Dr. Oliver Lah
Urban Change Maker Group
Technische Universität Berlin
Tel.: +49 (0)30 288 7458 16
E-Mail: oliver.lah@tu-berlin.de
Bio-FlexGen:
Prof. Dr.-Ing. Christian Oliver Paschereit
Chair of Fluid Dynamics
Hermann Föttinger Institute (HFI)
Technische Universität Berlin
Tel.: +49 (0)30 314 79777
E-Mail: oliver.paschereit@tu-berlin.de
Real_Deal:
Prof. Dr. Hans-Liudger Dienel
Chair of Work, Technology and Participation
Technische Universität Berlin
Tel.: +49 (0)30 314 21406
E-Mail: hans-liudger.dienel@tu-berlin.de
Criteria of this press release:
Business and commerce, Journalists, Scientists and scholars
Construction / architecture, Energy, Environment / ecology, Mechanical engineering, Oceanology / climate
transregional, national
Research projects, Science policy
German
You can combine search terms with and, or and/or not, e.g. Philo not logy.
You can use brackets to separate combinations from each other, e.g. (Philo not logy) or (Psycho and logy).
Coherent groups of words will be located as complete phrases if you put them into quotation marks, e.g. “Federal Republic of Germany”.
You can also use the advanced search without entering search terms. It will then follow the criteria you have selected (e.g. country or subject area).
If you have not selected any criteria in a given category, the entire category will be searched (e.g. all subject areas or all countries).
