‘Wij boffen nog met deze decaan’

Marco Waas kondigde tijdens zijn nieuwjaarsreceptie plotseling aan dat hij had besloten niet voor een derde termijn als decaan te gaan. Zijn activiteiten op het gebied van valorisatie nemen steeds meer tijd in beslag, meldde hij.

Waas zegt zich volledig te willen richten op ‘open innovatie en ondernemerschap in regionale, nationale en internationale context’. Ulijn noemt het begrijpelijk dat Waas ‘een nieuwe uitdaging zoekt’. “Als je er al zolang zit, ben je misschien toe aan iets anders.”

De decaan heeft volgens Ulijn leiderschap getoond. “Vaak wordt van decanen gezegd: ‘die voert het beleid van het college van bestuur uit’. Dat kan ik van Waas niet altijd zeggen. Hij kwam met oplossingen waar het college niet altijd blij mee zou zijn. Hij stond voor de faculteit : ‘Het is mijn faculteit en we gaan het zó doen’.”

De odc heeft volgens Ulijn ‘prettig en goed’ samengewerkt met Waas. “Als ik merk hoe de ondernemingsraad en het college van bestuur met elkaar omgaan, denk ik dat wij nog boffen met deze decaan”, zegt Ulijn. “Begrotingen waren altijd beschikbaar als het nodig was. Dat is bij andere odc’s anders.”

De facultaire studentenraad (fsr)noemt het ‘jammer’ dat Waas vertrekt. “Hij heeft veel betekend voor de faculteit”, zegt fsr-voorzitter Pieter Smorenberg. “Valorisatie heeft hij naar mijn weten goed gedaan. Onze contacten met hem waren goed. Hij stond open voor ideeën.”

Vanuit zijn expertise bij Unilever nam Waas een bedrijfsmentaliteit mee naar de faculteit, zo zegt Smorenberg. “Een goede bedrijfsvoering, dat is goed. Hij heeft veel contacten met het bedrijfsleven.”

 

They have been in the air for just a few years, but already researchers are thinking of ways to dismantle the A380 aircraft. The material, Glare (GlAss REinforced fibre metal laminate), which the A380s are largely made of, is what the scientists are interested in.

Because of Glare’s lightweight, aircraft made of this material are more efficient, which benefits the environment. But can this material also be properly recycled? Scientists disagree on this matter.
PhD researcher Guoliang Zhu, of the Metals Production, Refining and Recycling group (MMME faculty), pulls a crucible out of the furnace in his laboratory and shows what a small piece of freshly baked or ‘thermo delaminated’ A380 hull looks like. The crucible holds eight, thin aluminium sheets and shreds of glass fibre. Most of the epoxy – the third component in Glare – went up in smoke during the two hours of baking at 480°C.

The aluminium is of such high quality that after being refined it can still be used for the production of new Glare, Zhu says. He also believes that the pieces of glass fibre can be reused – not for Glare, but rather for the production of glass-reinforced composites, which have many uses, including in boats and cars. Yet to be certain Zhu must still test how strong the fibres are.
For now, the only scrap pieces of the material available are the rare leftovers from the production of airplane components, like the windows, which are cut out of the hull. Nevertheless, Zhu, and his supervisor, Professor Yongxiang Yang, believe efforts must now be made in order to ensure the recycling technique is ready before the airplanes are retired, which is expected to be in 30 to 40 years from now.

What’s more, the scientists believe that research into this technique should start early, as this will allow the manufacturers to anticipate the recycling process. Aircraft manufacturers could then, for instance, consider using a certain type of rivet that would facilitate the recycling process. “To what extent the rivets contaminate the aluminium is something I’ll also investigate,” says Zhu, who began his research one year ago.

Dr Erik Tempelman, a researcher at the faculty of Industrial Design Engineering, also experimented with the recycling of Glare during his PhD research in the 1990s. Among his research activities, Tempelman studied a cryogenic delamination technique: he froze small pieces of Glare by pouring liquid nitrogen (at a temperature of -196°C) over the material and then crunched it up. Since the pieces were full of thermal tension – the aluminium wanting to shrink more than the epoxy fibre – they were reduced to scattered bits. “It was very exciting research,” he says, laughing. “You had to be really careful with the nitrogen or else you’d loose your hands.”

Tempelman, who stresses that he is in fact a great fan of Glare, has strong doubts about the economic viability of the recycling process: “Sure, technically speaking, it’s easy to recycle the material, but it’s the economics that makes it difficult. For instance, to make thermal delamination economically interesting you would have to use enormous ovens. Yet keeping ovens that contain tons of Glare at such high temperature for two hours costs a lot of energy.”
Prof. Yang doesn’t agree: “I estimate that the thermal energy from the epoxy combustion will supply sufficient heat for the delamination process. If the thermal delamination and alloy refining are operated in an integrated plant, the process energy flow can be optimised so that the net energy consumption would be very low.”

In contrast to Zhu and Prof. Yang, Tempelman does not believe the aerospace industry will ever use the recycled 2024 Al alloy (the aluminium used in Glare) to produce new Glare. “The aerospace industry prefers virgin materials to eliminate all risks of contamination,” Tempelman says. “Aluminium aerospace wastes can therefore only be recycled into non-aerospace applications.”
Moreover, Tempelman adds that recycled aluminium from Glare is also problematic for non-aerospace applications. The material contains an unusually high copper content and is therefore less formable, which is advantageous for aerospace applications, but not for most other applications. And, unfortunately, copper is difficult to remove.

Understandably, the material is currently being dumped or stored. “But landfill will probably be prohibited in the future,” Prof. Yang says, adding that he believes the aerospace industry will eventually have to deal with stricter recycling rules.