Press releases | News

The global demand for water is increasing due to ever more intensive water use. At the same time, the usable water supply is becoming progressively smaller. To ensure that water does not slow down key industries, the energy transition and food security, several research groups at the Fraunhofer Institute for Ceramic Technologies and Systems IKTS are working on projects that at-tempt to solve current problems in the water, agriculture, and energy sectors in a holistic approach. One goal here is to use wastewater as a resource. This in-cludes, for example, new recycling methods for municipal and mining wastewater, which can provide important raw materials for sustainable agricul-ture as well as for the growing demand for hydrogen.

The automotive industry is undergoing an unprecedented transformation process: the emergence of electromobility in conjunction with advancing digitalization and the introduction of Industry 4.0 technologies are changing the sector significantly. As the industry changes, so do the demands on the professions that are deployed here. In the project “BeaT - Renewing Vocational Training for the Automotive Transformation”, funded by the German Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Energy, Fraunhofer IKTS and its partners are investigating which new qualification requirements the change in the automotive sector brings with it and how these requirements can be served in modern education and training programs. In collaboration with IKTS, the Institute of Sociology and the Service Center Research and Transfer of the Friedrich Schiller University Jena as well as the network automotive thüringen e.V. are partners.

The “Pilot Center for Powder Synthesis and Extrusion” was officially inaugurated after a two-year construction period and adds approximately 600 m² of usable space to the facilities of the Fraunhofer Institute for Ceramic Technologies and Systems IKTS in Hermsdorf. Research topics in the new building are stationary energy storage and ceramic membranes for material separation. The construction was funded by the federal government and the Free State of Thuringia with 6.4 million euros.

High-performance ceramics provide key components for liquid filtration, sensors or solid electrolyte high-temperature energy storage systems – but only if they are defect-free. To detect rejects at an early stage, researchers at Fraunhofer IKTS have developed a fast, non-destructive and in-line inspection method based on laser speckle photometry.

With modern non-destructive test methods, scientist of Fraunhofer IKTS and the research group Smart Ocean Technologies (SOT) analyze the battery state of underwater robots, so-called Unmanned Underwater Vehicles (UUV). Such underwater vehicles are being used more and more frequently and for longer periods of time: they inspect drilling platforms, maintain underwater gas pipelines, search for cracks in offshore wind turbines, collect marine data or map the fauna and flora on the seabed. Better battery management should now reduce deployment costs and ensure that these underwater robots can dive for longer.

In the "MAG4INK" research project, researchers from Fraunhofer IKTS, Fraunhofer FEP and the Helmholtz-Zentrum Dresden-Rossendorf (HZDR) aim to demonstrate that flexible magnetic field sensors can be printed cost-effectively at industrially relevant scales. The German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) is funding the project with a total of 1.5 million euros for three years.

The SONIQ RAIL EXPLORER (SRE), a development of Vossloh Rail Services GmbH, Fraunhofer IKTS and WOLFRAM designers and engineers, was awarded 2nd place in the SET4FUTURE Innovation Award 2021 of Saxony's Rail.S rail technology cluster.

As the first event of the Tridelta Campus Sensor Space, the Fraunhofer IKTS Sensor Space Summer School welcomed participants at the Hermsdorf Vocational School from August 6 to 8, 2021. “Learn programming!” – that was the request of all students, and it was fulfilled.

The competition for two large-scale research centers in Lusatia in Saxony and in the Central German coalfields is currently underway. The German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) and the Free State of Saxony want to create perspectives for the coal regions. In mid-2022, the players who will be allowed to implement their scientific concept on site will be selected from the national and international applicants.

The use of hydrogen holds great potential for decarbonizing industry and thus makes an important contribution to protecting the climate. Innovative hydrogen technologies are the key to a promising and growing market. The state of Thuringia is therefore supporting the new hydrogen application center at the Erfurter Kreuz research campus “Industrial Hydrogen Technologies Thuringia (WaTTh)” with 6.9 million euros over three years. The state is providing a further 3.4 million euros for the purchase of a building in which Fraunhofer IKTS researchers can develop and test hydrogen technologies.