Science Cafe: Fuels of the Future

Our society was and is still propelled by fuels. It started with burning wood, which allowed our ancestors to rise to the top of the food chain, fuelling the evolution humankind. Many millennia later, it was the coal fired steam engine that fuelled the industrial revolution, followed by the rapid adoption of many other so-called fossil fuels that our current society has come to depend on. Those fossil fuels are non-renewable and are used on such a scale that they are causing the Earth’s average surface temperature to rise, due to the accumulation of greenhouse gasses, with potentially catastrophic consequences. Therefore, it is important that we find new fuels again, that are renewable. Our two invited speakers, Samira Farahani, and Rene Wijffels will discuss two of those potential fuels of the future: hydrogen and algae. Dr. Samira Farahani works jointly at Energy & Industry Section and Process & Energy department at Delft University of Technology. She is an expert on the use of hydrogen as energy carrier. Prof. Rene Wijffels is chair holder of the Bioprocess Engineering group at Wageningen University. He is an expert on the use of microalgae in biotechnology.