Distributed secondary gas injection via a fractal injector: A nature-inspired approach to improving conversion in fluidized bed reactors

The conversion in bubbling fluidized bed reactors is suppressed because the interphase mass transfer and gas-solid contact in bubbling fluidized bed reactors are often poor. Most of the gas is present in the form of bubbles, which have low surface-to-volume ratios and are nearly devoid of catalyst particles. The chaotic behaviour of the bubbles...

The Electrostatic Wind Energy Converter: Electrical performance of a high voltage prototype

Wind energy is converted to electrical energy by letting the wind move charged particles against the direction of an electric field. The advantage of this type of conversion is that no rotational movement, which occurs in conventional wind turbines, is required. An electrostatic wind energy converter (EWICON) has been developed. Charged...

Sustainability by adaptable and functionally neutral buildings

The continuing high levels of office building vacancy in the Netherlands cause a loss of income for building owners and - since the physical life span of the buildings is not getting shorter – an increase of obsolete office buildings. These buildings are deteriorated or even prospectless, with no perspective on future lease or reuse for office...

Upgrades and Conversions of Floating Offshore Units: An Overview

Conversion Ratio

Before a shopper converts into a buyer there are a lot of steps to be taken. In each of these steps a portion of shoppers discontinues their purchase and the remaining part finalises the transaction. The conversion ratio is defined as the number of shoppers that finalise their transaction in com- parison to the number of shoppers that start a...

Converting office space: Using modular prefab architecture to convert vacant office buildings.

Almost 7 million square meters of office space in The Netherlands is vacant today. Conversion into housing is an often named solution, but is hardly ever put into practice because of financial and technical difficulties (location aspects not taken into account). On the other hand, standardization in office design can be seen as an opportunity in...

Automatic generation of CityGML LoD3 building models from IFC models

CityGML is a standardized data format used to store the semantic information and geometries of buildings and other object classes of 3D city models. The Level of Detail of current state of the art city models (LoD2) is not sufficient for accurate environmental simulations like noise, the solar potential of windows and other types of analyses. An...

Adaptive reuse of office buildings into housing: Opportunities and risks

Conversion into housing is a way of adapting and reusing vacant office buildings. Former research has shown possibilities for this type of conversion, and has delivered instruments for determining the conversion potential of vacant offices. While adaptation and renovation of outdated offices can prove to be a successful real estate strategy,...

NOW HIRING, wanted: User of tomorrow for space of the future

This graduation research considers vacancy management on portfolio level from the perspective of a real estate investor. A qualitative and quantitative mis-match of the performance of vacant office buildings induces that the investor's thinking: 'tomorrow will be better', is no longer apt for the future. With the thought in mind that 'an office,...

Improving the execution of complex projects at conversion yards: The development of a functional framework using a systems approach

This paper aims to improve the execution of complex projects by the development of a functional framework using a systems approach guided by the six steps from the Deweyan Inquiry. Readers unfamiliar with the systems approach I recommend reading the chapters 1,2,4 and 5 of the Delft Systems Approach(Veeke,2008). The developed framework offers a...

Modelling and design of a flat plate fixed film photoreactor for phenol degradation

This paper presents the mathematical modelling and design of a flat plate photoreactor with a fixed film photocatalyst to degrade phenol. Phenol was used as target pollutant as it is one of the most studied contaminants in photocatalysis and it is present in many of the wastewater streams containing pesticides, drugs, and dyes which cannot be...

Redesigning Allseas’ Lorelay: An investigation into the possible conversion options to increase the ship’s utilisation, resulting in a preliminary design

In the last year Allseas’ Lorelay has had very little work. Due to a bad market, very little available projects and heavy competition the ship has laid idle for the better part of the year. Allseas is wondering how the utilisation of the ship can be increased without losing her pipe laying capabilities. This question is reworked into the...

A methodology for assessing power performance of Wave Energy Converters, applied to a quasi-rigid submerged pressure differential device

In the transition to renewable energy, harvesting the power from oceanic waves is often mentioned to be next step after the deployment of wind energy technology. Although many different solutions for wave energy conversion (WEC) are being developed and financial support schemes exist, commercially extracting this energy seems however to be...