IFAT Munich is the most important industry gathering and the heart of the largest international network for environmental technologies.
Fraunhofer IKTS will be presenting innovative materials and technologies for water treatment, heat storage, and decentralized oxygen production.
Booth 115, Hall B2
Munich
Messe München
May 04, 2026 - May 07, 2026
Fraunhofer IKTS takes a holistic approach to industrial environmental issues: Process analyses are used to develop ceramic functional components for separation and reaction, which we then refine into cost-effective system solutions for water management, the manufacturing industry, mining, and agriculture. Our materials and process expertise seamlessly complement each other and meet technological, regulatory, and economic requirements. Successful approaches aim to combine ceramic membranes for micro-, ultra- and nanofiltration with electrochemical, sonochemical and photocatalytic processes (advanced oxidation processes, AOP). The new process combinations significantly reduce the energy consumption of water treatment. This increases process efficiency and environmental benefits while reducing process costs.
Wastewater treatment plants introduce oxygen in the form of air into aeration tanks to promote nitrification by microorganisms. Highly concentrated oxygen is needed to remove trace substances from wastewater by means of ozonation. Until now, the production of high-purity oxygen has been expensive. Fraunhofer IKTS has developed an energy-efficient membrane separation process that can significantly reduce the costs of decentralized oxygen supply. This also benefits other O2 applications.
The industrial bioeconomy aims to replace fossil raw materials with renewable, bio-based alternatives, thereby reducing CO₂ emissions and environmental pollution. An essential aspect of the bioeconomy is the circular economy, in which residual materials are considered valuable resources and recycled. The abonocare® innovation cluster provides economically viable value chains for this purpose – for example, in the field of nutrient recycling from sewage sludge, fermentation products, or process and wastewater from food processing. The focus here is on utilizing previously lost nutrients for efficient agricultural production while protecting the environment. abonocare® sees itself as a platform for knowledge exchange and the development of new customer-oriented solutions for the material and energy recovery of organic waste materials.
Today, substance separation is carried out after chemical synthesis and is generally more time-consuming and energy-intensive than the synthesis itself. Thermal processes such as distillation, extraction, and adsorption dominate substance separation processes in chemistry. The membrane separation processes developed at Fraunhofer IKTS are significantly more energy-efficient than thermal separation processes. Due to the chemical and thermal stability of ceramic materials, the membranes can be used directly in the reactor, thus coupling chemical reaction and material separation. This makes chemical synthesis much more efficient. The use of membrane reactors for chemical synthesis allows new reactor and plant concepts to be developed.
The use, storage, or conversion of residual and waste heat makes a significant contribution to a successful energy transition. Drying water-laden zeolites requires large amounts of energy, which is released again as heat when the zeolites are moistened at any later point in time. Zeolites are therefore suitable as heat storage media with extremely high storage density. They can also be used in heat pumps, as heat converters, and for humidity control. At Fraunhofer IKTS, excellent heat storage properties are determined for all molded bodies in both open and closed adsorber systems.
Fraunhofer Institute for Ceramic Technologies and Systems IKTS