About the sponsorship
FLSmidth has signed a two-year sponsorship agreement worth two million Danish kroner with Technical University of Denmark (DTU) for its Eco Car project. The Eco Car project has been chosen because of its focus on innovation, the environmental impact and combustion techniques – all which are core competences at FLSmidth.

FLSmidth and DTU have entered into the sponsorship as both parties wish to strengthen the bonds between the company and the institution. The collaboration is a natural continuation of the more formal ties between FLSmidth and DTU, like for instance the 50 million DKK research project backed by the Danish National Advanced Technology Foundation with focus on fuels and emissions in cement kilns. 

            

                The Innovator runs on hydrogen                                                 The Dynamo runs on dimethyl ether (DME)


FLSmidth Roadrunners
Originally named DTU Roadrunners, the team was first formed in 2003 after an invitation from Shell Denmark to compete in that year’s Shell Eco-marathon. FLSmidth has sponsored the team almost since the team was formed.

The Roadrunners is the team of students who follow DTU’s ‘ecocar’ course. The purpose of the course is to build energy effective vehicles and propulsion systems. The course aims at creating awareness of and perspectives for the public energy debate.

DTU’s Eco Car project is very unique in the sense that it is primarily run by the students themselves. With the sponsorship agreement FLSmidth wishes to expand an economic safety net under the students which will allow them keep their autonomy and possibility to experiment.

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Ups and downs at the 2008 Shell Eco-marathon
On 22 to 24 May the two cars competed in this year’s Shell Eco-marathon at the Nogaro race track in southern France. The winners were the vehicles in each class which ran the longest on the equivalence to one litre of petrol.

The hydrogen-fuelled Innovator competed in the prototype category. The Innovator sat a new Nordic record in its category running 2328 km/l. The record to beat next year is 3,836 km/l (set in 2005 by ETH Zürich).

The DME-fuelled Dynamo competed less successfully in the Urban Concept category. A specially adapted fuel dump for the lively DME gave the team problems from the beginning. Nevertheless, the team finished on an 8th place running the equivalent to 265 km/l.




(Photos on this page: Søren Svendsen)