- Date 2024-10-15
Sustainable manufacturing process for aerogels
Prof. Dr.-Ing. Manfred Renner, Head of the Fraunhofer Institute for Environmental, Safety and Energy Technology UMSICHT, received the Innovation Award of the State of North Rhine-Westphalia 2024 in the "innovation" category for a novel production process for aerogels that is suitable for the mass market. On September 30, 2024, Mona Neubaur, Minister for Economic Affairs, Industry, Climate Protection and Energy and Deputy Prime Minister of the State of North Rhine-Westphalia, presented Prof. Renner with the award at KOMED in Cologne. The innovation prize in this category is endowed with 100,000 euros.
Aerogels are the lightest solid material in the world - they consist of up to 99.8 percent air. They are also sustainable, as they are made from the non-critical mineral raw material silicon dioxide. The fine structure of the aerogel firmly encloses air molecules, and the nanopores in the aerogel restrict the heat-conducting air molecules so much in their freedom of movement that no energy is passed on to other air molecules. This turns the aerogel into a high-performance insulator with very low thermal conductivity. However, the production of thermal superinsulators has so far been cost-intensive, which is why they have only been used in niche applications.
Fraunhofer UMSICHT set itself the goal of producing aerogels cost-effectively and thus making them suitable for mass production. Within six years, the researchers developed an innovative production process for aerogels that combines various production steps using supercritical CO2 and thus significantly reduces production costs: manufacturing costs were cut by 70 percent and production time from more than ten to four hours. The production process is also completely free of environmentally hazardous chemicals and is therefore sustainable. The team successfully transferred the process to pilot plant scale and is now preparing to scale it up to industrial scale.
Source:
Fraunhofer Institute for Environmental, Safety and Energy Technology UMSICHT, Press release / October 01, 2024
https://www.umsicht.fraunhofer.de/en/press-media/press-releases/2024/nrw-innovation-award-aerogels.html
Further information (partly in German):
- Innovationspreis NRW 2024
Zukunft made in NRW – Vier visionäre Projekte ausgezeichnet
Oktober 2024 https://www.vditz.de/newsroom/news-detail/zukunft-made-in-nrw-vier-visionaere-projekte-ausgezeichnet - Innovator des Jahres 2024
Nominiert zum Publikumspreis: AEROLIGHT GmbH https://www.innovator-des-jahres.com/innovator/aerolight-gmbh/ - Preisträger NRW – Wirtschaft im Wandel / Land der Ideen
AEROLIGHT ist Preisträger 2024 in der Kategorie Startup https://land-der-ideen.de/wettbewerbe/nrw-wirtschaft-im-wandel/preistraeger-2024 - Sustainable, affordable building insulation with aerogels | Joseph von Fraunhofer Prize 2023
https://www.fraunhofer.de/en/about-fraunhofer/excellence-in-research/fraunhofer-research-awards/2023/joseph-von-fraunhofer-prize-2023-umsicht.html and https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P1eD5W2SE3Y