Press Releases

On 1st April 2024, Prof. Dr. Gerhard Sextl retired as Institute Director at the Fraunhofer Institute for Silicate Research ISC in Würzburg. Since February 2006, he has actively shaped the development of the Fraunhofer ISC and redefined its course. Over the past 18 years, the Institute has grown considerably under his leadership and has successfully established new fields of research and technologies related to the core competence of chemically based materials development.

The ReUse project, short for "Efficient direct recycling for low-value LFP battery for circular and sustainable waste management," is a 36-month research initia-tive. It is funded by the European Union's Horizon Europe research and innova-tion program, operating under Grant Agreement No. 101137774, with a substan-tial EU contribution amounting to €4,927,664.93 in funding. The project com-menced in January 2024.

Together with partners, the Fraunhofer Institute for Energy Economics and Energy System Technology IEE is paving the way for the establishment of large-scale production of green hydrogen and its downstream products in Chile. The core of the BMBF-funded project is research into the production potential of hydrogen and liquid fuels from solar energy. In addition to the technical issues, the researchers are investigating the economic, logistical and socio-economic aspects of scaling up. They are also supporting the installation of a pilot production facility for methanol and dimethyl ether in the country.

In October 2023, the EU project "SUNGATE" was launched under the coordination of Fraunhofer IME in collaboration with 11 partners from industry and research. The aim of the project is to develop a novel, sustainable and cost-efficient biohybrid technology based on artificial photosynthesis that will enable the highly efficient and scalable production of solar fuel.

South Africa could play an important role in the coming years as a reliable producer of green hydrogen — including as a supplier for Germany. However, the storage and distribution of this resource currently poses challenges. This is where the recently launched Fraunhofer joint research project HySecunda comes in, which is a cooperation between nine Fraunhofer institutes and the Fraunhofer Academy. The project aims to find optimized solutions for produc-ing, storing and certifying green hydrogen. In addition, the consortium is supporting efforts to build capacity in the region and in current projects on hydrogen-based fuels for the aviation industry.

Materials are actually "silent". Although temperature, moisture, chemical influences or mechanical stress leave their mark and have an effect on their strength and service life, they can hardly tell us anything about their history of use. Knowing more about the history of such influences could therefore make a decisive contribution to product quality. However, there is still no solution for making materials talk about their history. The "SmartRust" research project now aims to change this.

The European Union wants to ban a number of critical PFAS and is promoting the development of substitute materials for PFAS in four major collaborative projects, e.g. the EU project ZeroF. In this project, the Fraunhofer Institute for Silicate Research ISC is working with industrial companies and research institutes to develop solutions for PFAS-free food packaging and textiles.

Millions of tons of electronic waste are produced in the EU every year. With a novel approach, the new EU project "CircEl-Paper" could sustainably improve the recycling process for electronics in the future.

Human tissue models instead of animal experiments? What is already possible for some questions still faces major hurdles for more complex contexts and applications. In a joint project of the Max Planck Institute for Polymer Research, Mainz, and the Translational Center for Regenerative Therapies at the Fraunhofer Institute for Silicate Research ISC, Würzburg, scientific principles and biomaterials for the standardized production of valid tissue models are to be developed.

For the future decrease of carbon footprints in electromobility, the production of traction batteries has to become “greener”. In improving the electronic conductivity of battery cathodes carbon plays a critical role and thus is essential to achieve fast charging and discharging rates. The HiQ-CARB project, funded by EIT RawMaterials under the Horizon Europe Program started in 2021 to make the supply with high-quality conductive additives more sustainable, with low carbon footprint and resource-efficient carbon materials. The results after the first half of the project leave no doubt that a switch to more sustainable manufacturing methods is possible.