Abstract:

There is an urgent need to include teaching-learning active methodologies in technical studies such as mechanical engineering, as well as sustainability aspects. This implies to use of industrial machines by university students, so they face up to real and complex situations/problems. One of these problems is the high oil consumption, mainly used as oil emulsions, particularly in machining laboratory workshops. For example, only in the Department of Mechanical Engineering of the University of the Basque Country expenses in their machines 1400 liters/year and, it is estimated that 30% of this volume is lost by leakages or evaporations. These oil emulsions imply health problems to students such as skin allergies or fungal infections during their laboratory practices. Besides, once their useful life ends, these oils produce a high negative impact over the environment. To deal with this problem and, at the same time, to integrate the Education for Sustainability in the curriculum, a new system based on CO2 cryogenic cooling with the aim of suppressing oil emulsions has been developed together with students and staff. It is presented in this paper. In addition, we want to highlight that the CO2 used by this cooling system is recycled; that is, the CO2 used is captured from a primary process and used in the laboratory workshops, thus, reducing the carbon footprint. Therefore, environmental innocuousness and cleanness associated to cryogenic processes is maintained, the current problem with oil emulsions is solved and the sustainability is integrated into the workshops.

Keywords:

Innovation, technology, research projects.