Delta Netherlands Scholarship — Final Report (Introduction to TU Delft Materials for Sustainable Development)

15 min readDec 26, 2020

Written on: Dec. 07, 2020

Before writing this report, I would like to thank the Delta Foundation for financially supporting my study in the Netherlands. Delta foundation has been helping Taiwanese students who aim to study sustainability abroad for over a decade.

Origin

In 2018, I applied to study the MSc program at TU Delft in the field of Materials Science and Engineering. The reason why I applied for this program is that the program contains a specialization called “Materials for sustainable development”. I used to study Materials Science and Engineering in my bachelor years, however, I couldn’t find the connection between my enthusiasm — the issues related to sustainability — and the materials science that I learned in class. I was very frustrated at that time and spent all my energy on the activities outside of my classroom, such as organizing environmental campaigns on the campus. Not until I had an internship at the Earth Citizen, an environmental NGO in Taiwan, did I realized that people from all backgrounds can contribute to sustainability issues. During the last year of my bachelor's, I worked in EPEA Taiwan (Cradle-to-Cradle platform) as an intern, and I found that materials science is actually crucial for the development of green products and circular economy. Therefore, I decided to go back to the field of materials science and strengthen my professional skills for my future career.

Materials for Sustainable Development

After I arrived at TU Delft, I started to take the mandatory and supplementary courses arranged by the program. Aside from the courses related to the basics of materials science, there were also courses focusing on sustainability and ethics of engineering. These courses broadened my horizon and made me ponder about the responsibility of an engineer, which I have never thought that deeply before. I also learned how to put environmental considerations into the process of decision making, such as energy consumption, materials scarcity, and circularity. The courses that inspired me a lot include:

1. Ethics and Engineering

The professor in the field of philosophy was invited to be the lecturer of this mandatory course. In this course, we discussed different ethical theories, such as Kantianism, Bentham’s utilitarianism, and Aristotle’s virtue ethic, and their arguments on the engineering debate. Aside from these ethical theories, we also learned the basics of logic, such as distinguishing straw man fallacy, slippery slope fallacy, and post hoc ergo propter hoc. Finally, the course provided us an overview of the responsibilities and laws that an engineer should know.

In addition to the courses that deal with theories and concepts, we also have group courses that are self-arranged by students. In these group courses, interactive activities were used to stimulate discussion on case studies. For example, through the role-playing game, students simulated the historical event of the Space Shuttle Challenger disaster that happened in 1986 in the United States and gained awareness about the seriousness of miscommunication between engineers. My team member and I chose to use the case of the radioactive waste storage site in Lanyu Island, Taiwan, to design the role-playing game that illustrates the concept of “risk communication”. In this game, the engineers from the radioactive waste storage site need to communicate the risk of the project with the local village. The role-playing game turned out to be successful, however, the game was once out of control because the student actors were too deep into the drama and started to protest against the government in the play.

2. Society’s Needs: Case Studies and Materials Challenges

In this course, students need to do research on a case study that is related to materials science and the needs of society. The reason that I love about this course is that the materials research is not driven by the economy only, but also the sustainability of society. My team members and I did research on the recycling of LCD panels and their precious metals. Other research topics done by students include bio-degradable food-packaging, replacing toxic cadmium in the paints, environmental-friendly fire retardant, etc.

3. Materials and Sustainable Development

This course was a level-up version of “Society’s Needs: Case Studies and Materials Challenges”. In addition to doing research on a case study, the students also need to analyze six different aspects of technology and see if it meets the requirement for sustainability. These aspects include energy consumption & formation, international & regional regulation, social benefit & impacts, and economic feasibility, etc.

Figure 1. The analysis method mentioned in the book “Materials for Sustainable Development”, such as six aspects of fact-finding and stakeholder analysis.

My team members and I studied the topic of biofuel. During the investigation, we found out that the biodiesel made with palm oil is actually not sustainable due to the deforestation in the Southeast-Asian countries, such as Malaysia and Indonesia. Based on the literature, we calculated the deforestation area that can happen if the European transport sectors decide to reach the 2030 renewable energy goal by using palm oil biodiesel. Fortunately, after remaking the report several times, our team won the first prize during the final symposium.

Figure 2. Receiving the prize provided by industrial judges after the final symposium.

4. Materials and Ecological Engineering

This course was held in the department of civil engineering, and the two main themes in this course include (1) conducting life-cycle assessments (LCA) for different construction cases and (2) identifying applications of ecological engineering in the urban areas.

During the lecture, Professor Henk Jonkers, the inventor of self-healing bio-concrete, taught us the basic concepts of LCA methodology according to Dutch Bouwbesluit 2012. It is regulated that for all houses and office buildings in the Netherlands, which are built after 2013 with a total user surface larger than 100 square meters, an environmental impact assessment must be delivered. This assessment contains the 11 environmental impact categories for different construction and transportation stages. These impact categories include global warming, freshwater aquatic ecotoxicity, eutrophication, and abiotic fuel depletion, etc. By conducting LCA properly, one can assess the sustainability of a construction case and make optimization according to the result.

Aside from LCA, we also studied the use of sustainable materials and energy, green building envelops, multiples functions provided by the ecosystem, and the interaction between the environment and building materials. The topic which has the biggest scale in space is the “infrastructure and landscape ecology”. For this topic, we discussed solutions to habitat fragmentation and road disturbance, including fish ladders, eco-ducts, and roadside verges.

The most inspiring topic I found in this course was the overview of natural building, including its properties, construction methods, potential, and limitation. One of Professor Jonkers’ students, Yask Kulshreshtha, was invited to share his Ph.D. research on natural building materials with us (specifically, mud and other biomaterials). After backpacking around his home country, India, for nine months and living in different earth houses, Yask realized that some people in the remote areas are reluctant to build a natural building even though it is cheap and sustainable. This phenomenon is due to the low social image of earth houses in Indian society. To regain the popularity of natural buildings and raise its social image, Yask decided to improve the durability of mud building blocks and advance the design of natural buildings. This story moved me a lot and I think Yask’s initiation is a great example of building a connection between one’s scientific research and society’s need.

Figure 3. The photo shows the project of “Guerrilla Gardening”, which my team members and I did after the workshop. We were trying to grow moss graffiti on a concrete surface along the riverbank. The white paint is a mixture of yogurt, sugar, and mosses. This project is also related to our final case study in class, which is called “the bio-receptivity of cementitious materials”.

5. Materials Separations in Waste Processing

This course is about separating materials in the waste stream. The course contains experiments, lectures, and computational simulation. During the experiment classes, the professor gave each team a bucket of mixed garbage pieces. The pieces contained all kinds of sliced plastics, metal nuggets, wire, and paper. Then, the professor asked us to choose only 3 machines to separate the garbage properly and get the highest profit from materials regeneration. This mission requires students to know the physical properties of different materials (e.g. density, conductivity, magnetism) in order to select the right machines and arrange them in proper order. In addition, we also need to know the price of each material and purity regulation in the recycling market. The same mission was conducted again during the computational classes, where students used TU Delft’s software to design the optimal process flow for materials separation.

I used to work as a teaching assistant in a course related to the innovative recycling industry during my bachelor years. However, none of these past experiences gave me that stunning feeling as I tried to separate the waste with my team members. After the process of learning-by-doing, I now have a deeper understating of the challenges faced by the recycling industry.

6. Materials for Clean Energy Technology

This course is about materials science in the development of solar and hydrogen energy. Students are required to study scientific papers every week and make a final presentation on one of the papers. This course made me realize that my critical thinking needs to be improved. Instead of believing every word a researcher said, I should be able to make critical comments on a scientific paper, even though it may have a high reputation in the research field.

7. Recycling Engineering Materials

This course is also related to waste processing and circular economy. However, the focus was on daily products such as cellphones and computers, as well as automobiles and airplanes. We learned the metallurgy process for recycling metals and the compounding process for recycling polymers. The final report that my team member and I worked on is about the recycling of lithium-ion batteries and electric motors of Tesla Model X.

Het Leven in Nederland

In addition to taking courses, I also joined various activities related to sustainability during my first year in the Netherlands. In order to share these experiences with my Taiwanese friends, especially those who also work in the field of suitability and environmental protection, I started a project called “Het Leven in Nederland” and wrote a short article (in Chinese, and sometimes in English as well) on Facebook per month. Most of the topics that I wrote are related to environmental sustainability and ethics of engineering. However, some topics are more related to cultural and societal aspects. The topics that I covered are listed as following.

Joint Interdisciplinary Project

In the second year of my master's, I completed two important research/internship projects. One is the Joint Interdisciplinary Project (JIP), and the other one is my master thesis project. JIP is a brand-new program in TU Delft that started as a pilot project in 2018. In 2019, the scale of JIP was expanded and that was the moment when I joined as a participant. During JIP, students from different TU Delft’s faculties were separated and assigned to various teams. Each team has to cooperate with a specific company and work on a research or design project within 11 weeks.

I was assigned to the WEP team based on my priory list during the application. Well Engineering Partners (WEP) is an engineering consulting company specialized in the field of geothermal energy. They are responsible for designing and maintaining most geothermal wells in the Netherlands. Although the geothermal energy in the Netherlands is not as abundant as in the countries such as Iceland and the USA, and the temperature is not high enough for generating electricity, the stability of formation makes the construction of geothermal well relatively easier than in some other countries. The geothermal energy in the Netherlands is mostly used for heating up the greenhouses, especially in the winter. First, the geothermal water is pumped up and is then used to heat up the clean water in a separate pipe with the help of a heat exchanger. While the clean water is sent to the greenhouses, the geothermal water is pumped back into the ground through an extra well and forms a closed loop. In this way, land subsidence and surface water pollution can be avoided.

During these 11 weeks, I worked with 3 other students from the field of Geo-engineering and Complex Systems Engineering and Management. Together, we developed an LCA model to calculate the carbon emission and the financial cost of a specific geothermal well. The model considers the dimension of a geothermal well and its materials selection, as well as the construction and the maintenance stage. I was in charge of corrosion research during the project. Since the geothermal water contains high salinity and acidity, it can corrode the geothermal well and decrease its lifetime, raising the maintenance cost. In the worst-case scenario, the geothermal well can fracture due to severe corrosion, and the surface water can be polluted by the leakage of geothermal water. Since corrosion is one of the most common engineering challenges in the field, we decided to calculate the corrosion rate of each material and its effect on the carbon emission and maintenance cost. In this way, the model can serve as a tool for WEP engineers to make better decisions. In fact, before joining JIP, I had no idea about the scientific knowledge behind corrosion. In order to do my job properly and be helpful to the team, I took an extra course of “Corrosion science” at TU Delft in the same quarter. Thanks to the course and the supports of my lecturers, my team members and I finally found a way to put the equations related to corrosion into our model. Because of this experience, I started to learn the basics of electrochemistry, and it turned out to be the field of my thesis project.

In addition to regular meetings with WEP and JIP’s workshops, we also have chances to go on excursions. The famous area for Dutch greenhouses, Westland, happens to be very closed to TU Delft. Together with the engineers from WEP, we visited several geothermal sites and met with farmers who used geothermal energy to heat up their greenhouses. Aside from informal interviews with these farmers, we also made a questionnaire to collect the information that can help to modify our model. These experiences made me learn a lot. I found myself become more confident after stepping out of my comfort zone again and again during JIP. I also experience some moments of cultural shock when working/communicating with Dutch people, but I am glad that I gradually got used to the culture and have a taste of the working environment here.

Figure 4. Constructing the model in the WEP office. / Figure 5. Excursion to the geothermal site.

Figure 6. All the JIP participants in 2019. / Figure 7. Photo with WEP engineers and my team.

Master Thesis Project

The topic of my master thesis is “Electrochemical Impedance Spectroscopy Sensors for the Detection of Heavy Metal Ions in Water-based Solutions”. This research was funded by both TU Delft and TWTG. TWTG is an innovative company based in Rotterdam, and they help their clients solve industrial challenges by developing smart sensors. The reason why I applied for this project is that it has a strong connection with environmental protection. In addition, I already knew this electrochemical technique during JIP since it is also used in the corrosion research of geothermal wells. My main research objective is to understand the feasibility of using Electrochemical Impedance Spectroscopy (EIS) sensor to detect water pollution and to develop the physical interpretations of the EIS results. The project was originally planned for 9 months, however, due to the outbreak of coronavirus and two lockdowns that happened in March and October, the progress of my project was delayed dramatically. Since the pandemic situation affected the administrative process of all institutes, including the laboratories in TU Delft and the cooperating partners, I couldn’t get the sensor prototype from my supervisors in the end. Therefore, I had to make an alternative electrochemical cell with the materials that I could find in the lab to conduct the experiments. Thankfully, the electrochemical cell that I made was able to collect reproducible data for further analysis, and I managed to graduate before the end of November. This allows me to apply for the subsidy for the international students whose graduation was delayed due to COVID-19.

To be honest, life was not very pleasant during the time of my thesis project. There were a lot of challenges and dramatic changes that happened in 2020 due to the outbreak of coronavirus. At first, wearing face masks was not a common thing in the Netherlands and some Asian students around me experienced discrimination when wearing face masks in public places. As the pandemic situation got worse and wearing a face mask had gradually become a norm, the fear of discrimination had finally disappeared. However, the worsening of the pandemic situation led to the lockdown of the whole country, and all my previous routines, such as taking music and dancing classes at X center in TU Delft, were taken away. Endless quarantine, the decrease of social interactions, and the great fear of getting sick have posed a difficult challenge for maintaining my mental health. Thankfully, I was surrounded by many friends, and the emotional support they gave allowed me to walk through this difficult time. In addition, I received good feedbacks from TWTG and the committee members of my thesis defense in the end. It is a comfort to know that the research I did is useful for the future development of the EIS sensor.

Exploration in Art

Although it may not be directly related to sustainability, I would also like to record my study in the field of art, which I gradually become very interested in during the time in the Netherlands.

1. Art, Empathy and Ethics

This course is a combination of art and philosophy. Students who joined this course need to deliver an essay about the ethical debates behind a specific technology. Afterward, it was required to create an artwork that can illustrate an idea or stimulate further discussion on that specific technology. During the course, some artists were invited to be our lecturers, and they arranged classes that successfully forced us to jump out of our rigid minds as engineering students. Although I love visiting art museums and exhibitions, especially the ones for contemporary art, I have never really composed a contemporary artwork in advance of this course. The focus of the course during that time was about “human enhancement and connectivity”, and my essay was about using brain chip to control the emotions of people and give treatment to mental illness. In the end, I made a short film to capture the relief of a PTSD patient who went through successful mental treatment. In the film, I used clothes as a symbol of memory, and the process of taking off clothes represents the desensitization of trauma. Since the film was well received by the audience, I started to become more confident about making films and my own contemporary artworks.

2. Materials in Art and Design

This course is deeply related to materials characterization. By using characterization techniques, materials scientists can help museums and collectors distinguish the authenticity of artwork and date its time. In addition, by studying the chemical composition of the paintings, evidence can be found to solve historical puzzles. During the course, we also covered the restoration of canvas paintings, as well as the research on cave painting and archeology. The case study was about investigating the background information of an unknown painting by X-ray Fluorescence Spectroscopy (XRF) analysis and searching historical data. It was a pity that the excursion to Rijksmuseum’s restoration lab was canceled due to the pandemic situation.

Conclusion

During these two and a half years in the Netherlands, I really grew a lot. The experience of working and communicating with people from various cultural backgrounds, as well as the solid studies on sustainability, have broadened my horizon, making me think more and deeper than before. There were also some difficult times and challenges, however, I would say that life in the Netherlands was beautiful and full of inspiring moments. I am glad that I befriended lots of amazing people here and seized every moment that I had. I feel really grateful for all the people who have helped me along the way, especially my family in Taiwan and my friends. In the future, I hope that I can put the knowledge I learned into practice and contribute more to the sustainable development of the world.