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Advances in technology across industry TECHNOLOGYsPoTLIghT

Audi, Italdesign and Airbus combine self-driving car and passenger drone

Audi, Italdesign and Airbus have developed ‘Pop. Up Next’, an entirely electric, fully automatic concept for horizontal and vertical mobility. In the distant future this vehicle could transport people in cities quickly and conveniently on the road and in the air, at the same time solving traffic problems. The dominant interior feature is a 49-inch screen, while interaction between humans and the machine is performed by speech and face recognition, eyetracking and a touch function.

The ultra-light, two-seater passenger cabin can be attached either to a car module or to a flight module. Audi is supporting the project with know-how on battery technology and automation.

“Creativity is needed where new mobility concepts for cities and people’s diverse needs are concerned. Italdesign is an incubator for innovative technologies and radical prototyping. Pop.Up Next is an ambitious vision that could permanently change our urban life in the future,” says Dr Bernd Martens, Audi board member for Procurement and President of Italdesign. Italdesign develops futureoriented vehicle concepts for Audi and customers around the globe.

Jörg Astalosch, CEO of Italdesign, says: “Various players will define the rules of urban mobility in the future. We are proud to collaborate with Airbus to investigate solutions for future mobility.” Astalosch sees Pop.Up Next as a flexible on-demand concept that could open up mobility in the third dimension to people in cities. Visit: www.italdesign.it

New technology streamlines production of biogas and bioethanol

Textile reactors, developed at the University of Borås, have new features that provide a more efficient production of fermented products such as biogas and bioethanol, and to a significant lower cost of the fermentation process.

The PhD student Alex Osagie Osadolor has developed new systems for regulating the temperature in the reactor, flow of mass in and out of the reactor, and a system for mixing the content.

The textile reactors used in industry today depend on inherent temperature conditions in the environment where the reactor is placed. Most often they are placed outdoors. Cold climate, for example, is not optimal, as the microorganisms that thrive and work best in a warm space, can freeze and die. With the systems and calculations made by Alex Osagie Osadolor, the environment is significantly improved in the textile reactor. This makes the microorganisms thrive, they remain in the reactor, and the fermentation process will improve.

In total, the project shows that it is possible to reduce the cost of the fermentation process by over 20 per cent. Visit: www.hb.se

a novel, water-stable metal-organic framework for selective co2 adsorption

Climate change is correlated with increasing CO2 emissions as a result of the combustion of fossil fuels in power stations, vehicles, factories and homes. One way to keep the atmospheric CO2 concentration within acceptable levels is by selectively removing it from power plant emissions. The physical adsorption of CO2 using porous materials provides an economically viable route for such CO2 capturing.

At the Research Priority Area Sustainable Chemistry of the University of Amsterdam (UvA), Dr Stefania Grecea develops synthetic strategies for making porous materials that enable efficient adsorptive separations.

Metal-organic frameworks (MOFs) are crystalline microporous materials that exist of metal ions (or clusters of metal ions) linked by organic ligands. MOFs are very promising materials for gas separation since their pore surfaces can be easily functionalised to tune the interaction with various gas molecules.

The UvA team designed a series of MOFs using a flexible organic linker in combination with alkaline metal ions, which are abundantly available, lightweight and low-cost. They show that when the guest molecules are removed, the three-dimensional structure of these MOFs shrinks. According to Dr Grecea, the study opens new avenues in developing low-cost and non-toxic materials, not only for CO2 capture but also for other gas separations. Visit: www.uva.nl