polymers – Politecnico di Milano – Progress in Research

YouRban: co-creating innovative solutions for recycling and reuse of composite materials

Posted on 05/02/202409/02/2024 by admin

The YouRban project, funded by the European Union as part of Horizon Europe, coordinated by Professor Marcello Colledani of the Department of Mechanical Engineering at Politecnico di Milano and also involving the Department of Design, has kicked off.

Europe is expected to generate almost 700,000 tonnes of reinforced polymer waste in 2025 and YouRban aims to address this challenge in an innovative and participatory manner. The project aims to create an active and aware urban community to find creative solutions for recycling and upcycling, in particular for reinforced polymers. By promoting the values of sustainability and inclusiveness and the knowledge of circular economy processes, the project will activate an urban ecosystem involving citizens, artists, designers, architects and small-scale producers (e.g., FabLabs and artisans’ workshops or Urban Factories).

YouRban is based on an innovative research strategy which draws on the European Union’s Green Deal and New European Bauhaus initiatives, promoting workshop and training activities for artists and designers.

The beating heart of the project is its truck, a mobile laboratory conceived as a true travelling workshop. This plant houses recycling and reprocessing technologies for end-of-life composite materials. The truck is not just a production tool, as it is also a powerful dissemination medium designed to promote the new values of the circular economy through exhibitions, artistic events and participatory activities related to the circular economy. Citizens, artists and FabLabs will be involved in co-creation activities and will also be able to explore demanufacturing and reprocessing technologies, gaining awareness of the economic, social and environmental benefits of the circular economy for their community.

The project is developed around two pillars: a pilot project in Milan and a pilot project in Barcelona. The approach of the pilot project in Milan is based on ‘problems in search of solutions’. Citizens point out concrete problems and artists design solutions through an innovative co-creation process. The involvement of YouRban’s technical experts ensures specialised expertise and training. The approach of the pilot project in Barcelona is reversed, as it adopts a ‘solutions in search of a problem’ perspective. Artists and creative networks design solutions for change, then look for stakeholders willing to adopt them to solve specific problems and meet community needs.

Finally, YouRban exploits the Open Call mechanism to involve micro-, small- and medium-sized enterprises, laboratories and associations interested in understanding material recycling technologies and opportunities, helping to raise awareness, train and create new jobs and business opportunities within the involved cities after the end of the project.

New catalyst makes chemical processes more efficient and less harmful to environment

Posted on 13/07/202308/09/2023 by admin

A discovery by the Politecnico di Milano opens up new perspectives in the field of sustainable chemical synthesis, promoting innovative solutions that allow chemicals to be created in a more efficient and environmentally friendly way. The research was published in the journal Nature Synthesis.

The team developed a catalyst that is more active and selective in esterification reactions, through which products used in the manufacture of medicines, food additives and polymers are formed.

The revolutionary feature of this new catalyst is that it reduces the use of rare metals, a significant step towards conserving critical resources and making processes more sustainable. In addition, the catalyst can be activated by sunlight, eliminating the need for energy-intensive methods. This discovery holds enormous potential in reducing dependence on finite resources and lowering the environmental impact of catalytic processes.

Gianvito Vilé, Associate Professor of Chemical Engineering at the Department of Chemistry, Materials and Chemical Engineering ‘Giulio Natta’, coordinated the project, while Mark Bajada, a Marie Skłodowska-Curie Postdoctoral Fellow at the Politecnico di Milano, is the first author of the paper. The study was conducted in close collaboration with researchers from Università di Milano Bicocca and Università di Torino, and was funded by the European Commission through a Marie Skłodowska-Curie Postdoctoral Fellowship and a Horizon Europe project recently awarded to the Politecnico di Milano (SusPharma).

The study in Nature Synthesis

Arrival of 3D inertial sensors

Posted on 14/09/202208/11/2022 by admin

It is now possible to print inertial sensors with additive manufacturing processes, thus reducing production times and costs. Inertial sensors are devices that capture the movement of an object, defining its position in space and its acceleration-deceleration.

The study by a group of researchers from the Politecnico di Milano was recently published in the journal Additive Manufacturing and demonstrates the possibility of using a combination of printing techniques (stereolithography 3D printing and inkjet printing) to produce millimetre-scale accelerometers, typically used to measure acceleration following shocks, movements, impacts or vibrations. For the active material of the inertial sensor, the devices developed use a piezoelectric polymer capable of generating an electric current when deformed.

The sensors produced have demonstrated the ability to detect various levels of acceleration (up to 10 g, ten times the acceleration in the Earth’s gravitational field), with possible applications in autonomous driving systems or portable electronic devices.

The results obtained are early proof of how additive manufacturing processes can be used for production of mesoscale microelectromechanical systems (MEMS), capable of combining mechanical and electrical properties, exploiting polymeric materials as an alternative to silicon.

The development of new materials and the synergy between innovative printing techniques can be the way to develop new devices and solutions that respond to the strong demand for low-cost smart sensors from various industrial sectors and from the Internet of Things (IoT).

The device was manufactured and characterized in the interdepartmental laboratory MEMS&3D at the Politecnico di Milano, which combines the skills of research groups from four departments (Civil and Environmental Engineering, Chemistry, Materials and Chemical Engineering ‘Giulio Natta’ , Electronics, Information and Bioengineering and Mechanical Engineering).

Read the study