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If we look at all of the business sectors in Germany, industry requires the largest amount of water. This makes access to efficient technology for cleaning and recycling water all the more important for this sector in particular. Ideally, this technology should also allow energy and valuable raw materials to be retrieved so that they can be reused in production. In order to address all of these issues in a practical way, researchers at Fraunhofer have been developing a testing and technology platform. It is located on-site at a large wastewater treatment plant, where the wastewater from one of the largest chemical parks in Europe is treated.

Using substrate waste from mushroom production and sewage sludge compost, the Fraunhofer Institute for Ceramic Technologies and Systems IKTS and its partners have made a landfill site in the Leipzig area flourish. In the future, the researchers also want to use their new recultivation technology to vegetate open-cast mines and old mining dumps – and, as a welcome side-effect, significantly reduce energy consumption in German mushroom cultivation facilities.

The Fraunhofer Institute for Ceramic Technologies and Systems IKTS and the Altech Group establish the joint venture Altech Batteries GmbH to commercialize the ceramic solid-state battery cerenergy^® developed at Fraunhofer IKTS. In the coming years, a cerenergy^® battery factory is to be built at the Schwarze Pumpe site in Saxony.

At the Sensor Space Summer School of Fraunhofer IKTS, students from grade 7 and up build their own heart monitor.

In collaboration with TU Dresden, Fraunhofer researchers have developed a process for obtaining valuable, high-purity ethyl acetate from whey. This can be used, for example, to produce environmentally friendly adhesives, thereby replacing conventional ethyl acetate extracted from fossil-based raw materials. It also eliminates the need for costly disposal of the molasses produced during whey processing.

More than 20 companies from the Erfurter Kreuz e.V. initiative are working together in the CleanEFX interest group to supply the commercial area at Erfurter Kreuz with energy and process heat in a climate-neutral manner. Even before the current geopolitical changes, the project idea was initiated in several workshops by companies and research institutions. The goal is to combine the existing infrastructures at the industrial park, to use process media in sector coupling and to find synergies among each other and in the region. The regional, sustainable energy solution has already inspired other companies and found renowned support in business and politics.

Triple Perfect: Equinor Ventures joins forces with Fraunhofer IKTS and experienced spinoff management and investment company CoFounder – resulting in the foundation of new deep tech venture “Nicoustic”. The new company provides offshore pressure vessel monitoring technology using guided ultrasonic waves.

Patients with severe respiratory or lung diseases require intensive treatment and their lung function needs to be monitored on a continuous basis. As part of the Pneumo.Vest project, Fraunhofer researchers have developed a technology whereby noises in the lungs are recorded using a textile vest with integrated acoustic sensors. The signals are then converted and displayed visually using software. In this way, patients outside of intensive care units can still be monitored continuously. The technology increases the options for diagnosis and improves the patient’s quality of life.

To convert food scraps and other biological waste back into usable materials, the Fraunhofer Institute for Ceramic Technologies and Systems IKTS, together with industry and research partners, built a facility in Thallwitz near Leipzig that is unique worldwide. It produces synthetic fuels and biogenic waxes from biogas – not only from the contained CO₂. The biogas is obtained from old fats used in catering and food production. If required, a ceramic electrolyzer can be connected, which also provides the required substances for the process using electricity from renewable energies. IKTS now intends to further develop the innovative plant concept for industrial-scale production in cooperation with a Leipzig-based company.

Research into new, forward-looking approaches to a safe and sustainable water supply is being promoted in Thuringia in the long term. The Thuringian Water Innovation Cluster (ThWIC), jointly initiated by the Friedrich Schiller University Jena, the Fraunhofer Institute for Ceramic Technologies and Systems IKTS and the Ernst Abbe University of Applied Sciences Jena, prevailed in the final round of the Clusters4Future competition and will be funded by the Federal Ministry of Education and Research from 2023 onwards. This means that over the next nine years, up to 45 million euros in funding will flow into the development of new water technologies and research into how society deals with this increasingly scarce resource.