CyanO2 wins the tenth edition of the TU/e Contest with a bioreactor to capture CO₂. The contest gives a stage to students working on ground-breaking and market-worthy innovations.
TU/e Contest for ingenious solutions
Ingenious solutions to big, societal problems. Students' innovativeness regularly leads to technological breakthroughs. During the TU/e Contest, students from Eindhoven University of Technology (TU/e) get the chance to showcase their best ideas.
CyanO2
was declared the winner of the tenth edition of the TU/e Contest by the jury. The team - consisting of four women - is working on a new technology to capture CO₂ and convert it into raw materials for the chemical industry.
Bacteria in the lead role
"About 25% of global CO₂ emissions come from industry," states Gabrielle Mathieu, business developer at CyanO2, in her pitch. In various chemical processes, such as making cement, CO₂ is released. It is difficult to find a solution for this. Therefore, several companies focus on capturing CO₂ from the air. They then store this in the ground, she outlines. But CO₂ can also be cleverly reused. Therefore, the students have devised a bioreactor in which the captured CO₂ is converted into raw materials by cyanobacteria. Those materials can then be reused in various industries, such as the cement industry, thus making strokes on circularity here too. "This way, we have gains on two fronts."
Matylda Guz, CyanO2's modelling expert, is pleased with the award. "We are now really at a tipping point in the development of our product. With this money (the grand prize is €5000, ed.) we can make a working prototype," she says enthusiastically after the award ceremony. CyanO2 aims to further grow into an official student team at TU/e in the near future.
Guidance for young entrepreneurs
The TU/e Contest gives students with unusual and market-worthy innovations a stage. Teams have spent the past months going through a process with various workshops and coaching sessions, facilitated by the university and companies from the Brainport region. This is how they transformed their ideas into a market-worthy product. A total of 45 teams participated in this process, after which ten finalists were selected. During the finals on Thursday afternoon, they had the chance to pitch their ideas and engage in discussions with other students, companies and other organisations in the region.
Challenge-based learning
"We are organising the TU/e Contest because we think it is important that the engineers we train have an entrepreneurial spirit," said Isabelle Reymen, scientific director of TU/e innovation Space. The university challenges students to think about technological innovations, but also about implementing the technology in society. This is in line with the principle of challenge-based learning on which the university is increasingly focusing. "We link students and scientists to companies and organisations to make more impact together," states Reymen.
Jubilee edition
The anniversary edition of the innovation competition was celebrated in a big way. TU/e innovation Space and The Gate organised a Student Innovation Summit. Closing with the grand prize-giving ceremony of the TU/e Contest. During the afternoon programme, there was a poster market where teams shared their plans. The audience chose the winner of the Best Poster Award. In addition, a partner market was organised where partners of the TU/e Contest, e.g. companies from the region, got in touch with current and previous participants. Moreover, several workshops were also organised for students and alumni of the university told about their experiences as startup entrepreneurs.
Besides this winner, there were many other student teams who participated and won a prize. For more information, see the
article from Innovatio Origins
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Photo: Bart van Overbeeke
