K3D — with offices in Terborg and Eindhoven — is the market leader in 3D metal printing in the Netherlands. In less than ten years, the company has printed more than 150,000 metal parts still in use today in every kind of industrial installation.

Sustainable solutions — however praiseworthy they may be — usually mean significant financial investment. But there are exceptions. InOpSys was able to install a sustainable water filtration system at Ajinomoto Omnichem generating additional revenues...

Alpro – part of the Danone food company – has commissioned a water reuse installation with an annual purification capacity of 930,000 m3 at its site in Wevelgem. Thanks to this installation, some 80% of wastewater can be reused.

Gases are not the first things that spring to mind when you think of a construction site. Nevertheless, gases are indispensable for welding or cutting up reinforcement nets and steel beams, among other things. For larger construction companies operating internationally, it’s often quite a challenge to get the right gases to the right place at the right time. Air Liquide's new Construction Yards Team is changing all that.

Nitto Belgium — part of the global Nitto Group, headquartered in Japan — is based in Genk, where there’s a production unit and a knowledge centre comprising several specialist laboratories.

Victor Vijfvinkel is Marketing Communications Specialist at Renewi. In this video he explains how the company composts green waste and how the waste water released in the process is purified, using pure oxygen.

The VDL Group is an international family business of Dutch origin which today employs 17,000 people in 106 companies. One of these companies – located in Oss, the Netherlands – is VDL Mast Solutions.

InOpSys, a Belgian scaleup headquartered in Mechelen, specialises in treating and valorising wastewater generated by pharmaceutical and chemical companies.

The story begins on 9 April 2020. That night, a breach in a collection basin at a food processing plant near the town of Cambrai in France released close to 100,000 m³ of wastewater into the Scheldt river. The wastewater contained huge quantities of bacteria which consumed almost all the oxygen in the water, causing fish to die on a massive scale. In the days that followed, the pollution gradually spread further downstream, heading towards Belgium...

The exclusive world of superyachts is normally completely alien to mere mortals, except for those who actually work in the sector, of course. Tenderworks is a Dutch shipyard that supplies tenders to superyacht builders such as Feadship, Oceanco and Lürssen.

It is no secret that production quality and cost efficiency improvements - often remarkable ones - can be achieved if a supplier is willing to collaborate actively with customers. Especially when it comes to new production processes, such as FDM printing based on metal extrusion.

AutoSupply allows users of cylinder gases to monitor remotely how much gas is left in the cylinders. The gas is automatically reordered and delivered, with the result that the user hardly has to even think about it.

Data centres house large numbers of servers, usually contained within relatively compact spaces. While data centres often have huge floor surface areas - 50,000 m² or more is not exceptional - much of the space is taken up by long rows of 19-inch racks filled from top to bottom with servers. Substantial heat is therefore generated, which means that data centres must be equipped with powerful and reliable cooling.

Water purification installations have made use of a biological purification method based on so-called “activated sludge” since the 1950s. This involves mixing waste water with a population of specific microorganisms. These microorganisms have a cleansing effect, since they feed on organic material in the water. Subsequently, the sludge is removed before the water receives further treatment using additional purification techniques.

Increasingly, governments are promoting alternatives to sulphuric and hydrochloric acids in wastewater treatment plants, due to the significant health risks associated with these aggressive acids. CO2 proves to be an attractive alternative and has a superior capacity to neutralize wastewater acidity compared to the alternatives. What’s more, CO2 does not entail health risks, it is easier to use, more sustainable and more economical.

Pascal Smet, Brussels Minister of Mobility and Public Works, leaves no room for doubt: “The most important path travelled  to our lungs”. The Brussels-Capital Region’s government is looking to step up the fight against air pollution, which includes a 2030 target banning diesel-engined cars from the city. And in the longer term there’s a possibility that petrol cars will be banned too...

In this brief video, Roy Campe, R&D manager at CMB Technologies, unveils the first seaworthy ship in the world to use hydrogen combustion. The “Hydroville” currently transports commuters across the river Scheldt to Antwerp, avoiding rush-hour traffic, while at the same time contributing to CMB’s goal of cutting CO2 emissions in half. And the company has even bigger plans for the future.

Ruben Van de Sande—production manager at CADskills—explains the role of Air Liquide in the production of personalised implants by means of Selective Laser Melting (SLM).

CADskills is a Belgian hi-tech company designing and manufacturing personalised implants to replace or reconstruct parts of the human skeleton. Initially focusing on the skull and face, the company is gradually extending its range to the rest of the body.

The message of Professor Bert Blocken –professor of building physics at the Faculty of Architecture of Eindhoven University of Technology and part-time professor at the Department of Civil Engineering of KU Leuven– offers little reassurance about the risks of fine dust. He specialises in the aerodynamics of buildings, cities and the sports world. Since the behaviour of fine dust is strongly influenced by the wind –and therefore also by the aerodynamics of buildings and cities– fine dust is high on the professor’s agenda.

There are quite a few things to bear in mind when considering the purchase of a Laser Beam Melting (LBM) machine. Such a purchasing decision is always complex because the choice of a particular machine often involves the choice of a specific ecosystem as well.

3D printing –also known as additive manufacturing– is rapidly gaining traction. One reason is that the technology is now mature enough to be used for series production. As a result, 3D printing is on the agenda of an increasing number of companies.

As the name suggests, the Flemish Water Technology Network is a knowledge centre for water technology. Of course, waste water treatment is an important aspect of this, but the organisation also maps out sustainable solutions for recovering energy and raw materials from water.

CMB – the acronym for Compagnie Maritime Belge – has built a ferry to transport its employees back and forth between the left bank of the Scheldt river and CMB’s head office on the Gerlachekaai in Antwerp. A smart solution that enables employees to avoid traffic jams on the Antwerp ring road. But what really makes it special is that the ferry is powered by hydrogen.

In October 2017, Cryotainer and Air Liquide concluded a takeover agreement, making Air Liquide the new owner of the company based in Schiedam in the Netherlands.

Air Liquide supplies gases, services and solutions for SLS, DLMS (SLM) and EBM printing to Benelux customers active in the aircraft industry, the automotive sector, dentistry and surgery.

A research project carried out by Sirris shows that cooling with cryogenic gases offers significant advantages in the processing of titanium. Surface quality is greatly improved and burn marks are avoided. In addition, the service life of drill bits and milling cutters is doubled, which has a positive impact on costs.

Traditional cooling fluids for turning and milling are necessary but have some major disadvantages. Thanks to Cryo Machining, there is now a technology that offers a cost-effective and environmentally friendly solution.

Air Liquide's ground-breaking cryogenic machining technology is ready to conquer the world of metalworking. Recent research has shown that cryogenic machining offers many undeniable and demonstrated advantages over conventional machining techniques, and all with surprisingly low investment costs.