Within the ESSET programme, we actively collaborate with organisations, companies and institutes to increase the real-world testing of our students’s contributions, and to foster valuable career skills for students. This does not only happen in the 3rd and 4th year, where students conduct an internship and graduation assignment at a company or organisation, but also earlier in the programme.
One clear example is the 2nd year project “Biobased Solutions” for the module “Circular Economy and Nature Regenation. In this module, students work on an assignment provided by the Delft-based organisation NPSP (https://www.npsp.nl/en/), a company which “develops and supplies innovative environmentally friendly composite materials and products for public space, construction, design and mobility.”
As part of the assignment, students consider various end-of-life solutions such as mechanical recycling, pyrolyse recycling and solvolysis recycling, to find the most effective and efficient end-of-life solution for the biobased composite NPSP produces. Relevant here is not only to consider the solution from an economic and environmental point of view, but also from a legal perspective (notably the Waste Framework Directive of the EU).
The connection with the client is actively maintained throughout the project, for example during the site visit in week 2. Here the students travel to NPSP in Delft to learn more about the production of the biobased materials and current waste management options. In addition, the students present their findings to fellow students AND NPSP (the client) during the mini symposium at the end of the project, as show below in the pictures.
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