dr.ir. PM (Ellen) Slegers

dr.ir. PM (Ellen) Slegers

Assistant Professor
Contact

In my research I focus on developing approaches for prospective sustainability assessment of biobased chains, which are commonly at low maturity or so-called technological readiness level (TRL). The main challenges that my research focusses on are to deal with limited and uncertain data available for immature biobased technologies and to quantify the expected environmental, economic and social impacts and trade-offs between them. My research aims at developing a robust approach to quantify sustainability trade-offs based on uncertain and limited data. My team develops simulation models using approaches from Process Systems Engineering (PSE), Operations Research (OR) and sustainability assessment to quantify the expected performance and related system-wide sustainability impacts of low technological-readiness biobased systems. Close collaboration with experts within the disciplines primary production (‘feedstocks’) and conversion (‘biorefinery and processing’) is required to ensure validity of the developed mathematical models and resulting early sustainability assessment.

 

Research projects

 

 

A snapshot of recently finished student projects

MSc thesis (36 ects)

  • Logistic viability of cultivating microalgae on aquaculture wastewater in Norway
  • How to turn polyhydroxyalkanoates production into an economic and environmentally sustainable process chain?
  • Life cycle assessment and techno-economic analysis of the SLAM-DUNK value chain
  • Developing a decision support tool for ex-ante LCA.
  • The costs of economically optimal mixed organic substrates for insect-larvae protein
  • Environmental sustainability assessment of microalgal biorefinery methods
  • The sustainable design of processing networks for agricultural residues using a modelling approach

BSc thesis (12 and 24 ects)

  • The optimal source and supply chain for a Green Biomass Refinery in the Netherlands.
  • Benchmarking the sustainability of roses: comparative study between roses from Kenya and the Netherlands
  • Evaluating economic and environmental sustainability on a proposed circular tea lemonade supply chain using scenario analysis
  • Biobased sourcing, which options? Optimal distribution of biomass from feedstocks and by-products to different applications in a biobased economy

Teaching

  • BMO26806 Circular Economy
  • ORL20806 Decision science 1
  • ORL32806 Sustainability analysis (coordinator)
  • Summer School Bioeconomy (European League of Life Sciences)