On 30 March, ACT LOUISE had its first general assembly meeting. While most participants joined online, some were able to travel to Germany to attend in person at Technische Universität (TU) Darmstadt. This marks LOUISE’s first hybrid event following its kick-off in October 2021.
The weather outside was grey and rainy, but that did nothing to dampen the spirits of the ACT LOUISE partners as they gathered at TU Darmstadt for the project’s first general assembly.
Leaders in each of LOUISE’s six work packages took turns presenting their news and developments, and answering questions from the other meeting attendees. Breaks were spread throughout the day to allow for more informal discussions and coffee refills.
The easing of travel restrictions in Europe meant that partners from Norway and other parts of Germany were able to attend the event in person.
“After more than two years of online meetings, it was a great pleasure to meet at least some of our project partners in person, which gave us the opportunity to have some deeper technical discussions as well as personal conversations,” said Project Administrator Jochen Ströhle.
“In the past two years of COVID, we have got used to online meetings. This is of course very convenient, and more climate friendly than travelling. However, it feels as if we lose one dimension of project cooperation. It was really great to be able to travel together with SINTEF colleagues to Darmstadt, and meet other project partners, have a dinner and beer together in the evening, and discuss a lot of different topics. We also got to visit the impressive laboratory and pilot units at TU Darmstadt,” said Øyvind Langørgen from SINTEF Energy Research.
Those who couldn’t travel were able to join the meeting on Microsoft Teams instead, making it a hybrid event.
The meeting concluded with a visit to the 1 MWth pilot plant and TU Darmstadt’s Technical centre, which houses the 300 kW carbon looping plant and a cold-flow model of the pilot plant.
As opposed to the 1 MWth pilot plant, the cold-flow model enables experiments to be run at room temperature instead of 1000˚C. As it is made of plexiglass, visitors can observe the particle flow inside the fluidised bed reactors.
The cold-flow model is a scaled-down model of the pilot plant, and therefore the results are still transferrable to the 1 MWth pilot plant. The particles in the cold-flow model are of a different size and density than the ones in the pilot plant. This ensures that the particle flow is also representative of the flow in the 1 MWth pilot plant.
Preparations are already being made for the next meeting in October, and we hope that even more partners will be able to meet in person.
“In the future, I think that more project meetings will be arranged online, but we should still have some project meetings where we can all meet in person. We get to know each other better and learn more about the different countries involved, which can ease our project cooperation. And climate change mitigation will for sure need close international cooperation,” said Øyvind.
ACT LOUISE would like to thank TU Darmstadt for a well organised and executed first general assembly meeting!
Subscribe to our newsletter to stay up to date on the latest news and developments from ACT LOUISE.
