Open Access

Environmentally-friendly implementation of new technologies and eco-innovative solutions often faces additional secondary ecological problems. On the other hand, existing biological systems show a lesser environmental impact as compared to the human-made products or technologies. The paper defines a research agenda for identification of underlying eco-inventive principles used in the natural systems created through evolution. Finally, the paper proposes a comprehensive method for capturing eco-innovation principles in biological systems in addition and complementary to the existing biomimetic methods and TRIZ methodology and illustrates it with an example.

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 20th International TRIZ Future Conference, TFC 2020, held online at the University Cluj-Napoca, Romania, in October 2020 and sponsored by the International Federation for Information Processing. 34 chapters were carefully peer reviewed and selected from 91 conference submissions. They are organized in the following thematic sections: computing TRIZ; education and pedagogy; sustainable development; tools and techniques of TRIZ for enhancing design; TRIZ and system engineering; TRIZ and complexity; and cross-fertilization of TRIZ for innovation management.

Short-term load forecasting (STLF) has been playing a key role in the electricity sector for several decades, due to the need for aligning energy generation with the demand and the financial risk connected with forecasting errors. Following the top-down approach, forecasts are calculated for aggregated load profiles, meaning the sum of singular loads from consumers belonging to a balancing group. Due to the emerging flexible loads, there is an increasing relevance for STLF of individual factories. These load profiles are typically more stochastic compared to aggregated ones, which imposes new requirements to forecasting methods and tools with a bottom-up approach. The increasing digitalization in industry with enhanced data availability as well as smart metering are enablers for improved load forecasts. There is a need for STLF tools processing live data with a high temporal resolution in the minute range. Furthermore, behin-the-meter (BTM) data from various sources like submetering and production planning data should be integrated in the models. In this case, STLF is becoming a big data problem so that machine learning (ML) methods are required. The research project “GaIN” investigates the improvement of the STLF quality of an energy utility using BTM data and innovative ML models. This paper describes the project scope, proposes a detailed definition for a benchmark and evaluates the readiness of existing STLF methods to fulfil the described requirements as a reviewing paper. The review highlights that recent STLF investigations focus on ML methods. Especially hybrid models gain more and more importance. ML can outperform classical methods in terms of automation degree and forecasting accuracy. Nevertheless, the potential for improving forecasting accuracy by the use of ML models depends on the underlying data and the types of input variables. The described methods in the analyzed publications only partially fulfil the tool requirements for STLF on company level. There is still a need to develop suitable ML methods to integrate the expanded data base in order to improve load forecasts on company level.

Konstrukteure im Maschinenbau stehen häufig vor der Problemstellung, hochfest vorge- spannte Schraubenverbindungen und einen durchgehenden Korrosionsschutz zu ver- einen. Die Normen und Richtlinien bieten hierzu Stand heute keine ausreichenden Ant- worten. Die Hochschule Offenburg befasst sich im Rahmen einer industriellen Gemein- schaftsforschung mit der Fragestellung, welchen Einfluss organische Beschichtungen auf die Vorspannkraft insbesondere bei erhöhten Umgebungstemperaturen haben. In dieser Arbeit werden die ersten Ergebnisse zum Einfluss der Einzelschichtstärke des Beschich- tungssystems präsentiert.

Plant oils may be used as a sustainable, nearly CO2neutral fuel for diesel engines. This work investigates experimentally the particulate and gaseous emissions of diesel engines fuelled with different non-esterified, pure plant oils. The data are collected from three engines: a) Common rail 1.7 liter passenger car engine from Opel AG b) 12.8 liter truck engine from VOLVO c) Truck engine from MAN AG. The emissions of the MAN engine have been used to perform AMES tests to analyze possible health impacts of plant oil operation. Finally, all emission results with plant oils have been compared to traditional gas oils.

Vorgestellt wird ein Konzept zur biologischen Methanisierung von Wasserstoff direkt in Biogasreaktoren, mit dem durch Membranbegasung der Methangehalt des Biogases auf > 96 % erhöht werden kann. Essentiell zum Erreichen solch hoher Methanwerte sind die Einhaltung eines optimalen pH-Bereichs und die Vermeidung von H2-Akkumulation. Im Falle einer Limitierung der Methanbildungsrate durch den eigentlichen anaeroben Abbauprozess der Biomasse ist auch eine externe Zufuhr von CO2 zur weiteren Methanbildung denkbar. Das Verfahren soll weiter optimiert und in einem von der Deutschen Bundesstiftung Umwelt geförderten Projekt in der Biogasanlage einer regionalen Käserei in der Praxis getestet werden. Die hier angestrebte Kombination aus dezentraler Abfallverwertung und Eigenenergieerzeugung eines lebensmittelverarbeitenden Betriebs unter Einbindung in ein intelligentes Erneuerbare Energien - Konzept soll einen zusätzlichen Mehrwert liefern.

As engineering graduates and specialists frequently lack the advanced skills and knowledge required to run eco-innovation systematically, the paper proposes a new teaching method and appropriate learning materials in the field of eco-innovation and evaluates the learning experience and outcomes. This programme is aimed at strengthening student’s skills and motivation to identify and creatively overcome secondary eco-contradictions in case if additional environmental problems appears as negative side effects of eco-friendly solutions. Based on a literature analysis and own investigations, authors propose to introduce a manageable number of eco-innovation tools into a standard one-semester design course in process engineering with particular focus on the identification of eco-problems in existing technologies, selection of the appropriate new process intensification technologies (knowledge-based engineering), and systematic ideation and problem solving (knowledge-based innovation and invention). The proposed educational approach equips students with the advanced knowledge, skills and competences in the field of eco-innovation. Analysis of the student’s work allows one to recommend simple-to-use tools for a fast application in process engineering, such as process mapping, database of eco-friendly process intensification technologies, and up to 20 strongest inventive operators for solving of environmental problems. For the majority of students in the survey, even the small workload has strengthened their self-confidence and skills in eco-innovation

The 40 Altshuller Inventive Principles with numerous sub-principles remain over decades the most frequently applied tool of the Theory of Inventive Problem Solving TRIZ for systematic idea generation. However, their application often requires a concentrated, creative and abstract way of thinking that can be fairly challenging for the newcomers to TRIZ. This paper describes an approach to reduce the abstraction level of inventive sub-principles and presents the results of the idea generation experiment conducted with three groups of undergraduate and graduate students from different years of study in mechanical and process engineering. The students were asked to generate and to record their individual ideas for three design problems using a pre-defined set of classical and modified sub-principles within 10 minutes. The overall outcomes of the experiment support the assumption that the less abstract wording of the modified sub-principles leads to higher number of ideas. The distribution of ideas between the fields of MATCHEM-IBD (Mechanical, Acoustic, Thermal, Chemical, Electrical, Magnetic, Intermolecular, Biological and Data processing) differs significantly between groups using modified and abstract sub-principles.

Industrie 4.0 bedeutet nicht nur einen Wandel der technischen Möglichkeiten und Arbeitsbedingungen, sondern auch einen Bedarf an neuen, sich kontinuierlich weiterentwickelnden Kompetenzen und die Bereitschaft der Beschäftigten, Veränderungen mitzugestalten. Spielerische Ansätze der Kompetenzentwicklung können v.a. bei weiterbildungsfernen Mitarbeitern hilfreich sein, um das komplexe Thema verständlich zu vermitteln. Der Beitrag beschreibt ein Seminarkonzept mit integriertem Brettspiel, mit dem Teilnehmer anhand eines fiktiven Unternehmens (Müller GmbH) die Transformation eines Unternehmens in die Industrie 4.0 spielerisch nachvollziehen. Dieses Konzept erweist sich in einer ersten Evaluation als durchaus vielversprechend.

Electrochemical impedance spectroscopy (EIS) is a widely-used diagnostic technique to characterize electrochemical processes. It is based on the dynamic analysis of two electrical observables, that is, current and voltage. Electrochemical cells with gaseous reactants or products, in particular fuel cells, offer an additional observable, that is, the gas pressure. The dynamic coupling of current or voltage with gas pressure gives rise to a number of additional impedance definitions, for which we have previously introduced the term electrochemical pressure impedance spectroscopy (EPIS) [1,2]. EPIS shows a particular sensitivity towards transport processes of gas-phase or dissolved species, in particular, diffusion coefficients and transport pathway lengths. It is as such complementary to standard EIS, which is mainly sensitive towards electrochemical processes. First EPIS experiments on PEM fuel cells have recently been shown [3]. We present a detailed modeling and simulation analysis of EPIS of a PEM fuel cell. We use a 1D+1D continuum model of a fuel/air channel pair with GDL and MEA. Backpressure is dynamically varied, and the resulting simulated oscillation in cell voltage is evaluated to yield the ▁Z_( V⁄p_ca ) EPIS signal. Results are obtained for different transport situations of the fuel cell, giving rise to very complex EPIS shapes in the Nyquist plot. This complexity shows the necessity of model-based interpretation of the complex EPIS shapes. Based on the simulation results, specific features in the EPIS spectra can be assigned to different transport domains (gas channel, GDL, membrane water transport).