Bioeconomy

Article - 31/08/2016

The worm is the essence

Nadine Antic is a waste recycling specialist who set up a company called GlobalFlow when she was still a student. She recently joined forces with two other people to create a new company called albfertil GmbH, which has invented a natural fertilizer called WORMANIZER. The fertilizer is produced from biogenic food industry waste that normally ends up in the garbage. The unusual worm humus product has now been placed on the market.

Article - 23/08/2016

Bioenergy from meadow orchards

A project called ”Energiebündel & Flowerpower" run by the “Netzwerk Streuobst Mössingen" has established a complex local recycling network for biomass from meadow orchards. The network involves the city of Mössingen, the neighbouring municipality of Nehren, the KFB institution for the physically disabled and their self-help work group called “Streuobst und Naturschutz”, a biogas operator from Nehren, a start-up company called Vital…

Press release - 04/08/2016

Innovative, informative, communicative – BIOPRO Baden-Württemberg’s Special Interest Groups

The Special Interest Groups (SIGs) were created as part of BIOPRO Baden-Württemberg’s Akteursplattform Bioökonomie and are aimed at promoting Baden-Württemberg as a bioeconomy location. Two SIG meetings were held in May and June 2016.

Retrospect - 18/05/2016

Hannover Messe 2016: Hands-on bioeconomy

As in previous years, BIOPRO Baden-Württemberg GmbH participated in this year’s Hannover Messe, the world’s biggest industrial fair. With the USA as partner country and the lead theme ”Integrated Industry – Discover Solutions”, the 2016 trade fair attracted more than 190,000 visitors from around the world. From 25th to 29th April, visitors to hall 2 were able to discover biobased products and experience an economy that runs without fossil…

Article - 09/05/2016

Biobattery made from unused and windfall apples

The disadvantage of wind and solar energy is that they cannot be produced continuously nor can they be stored, at least not yet. High-performance batteries that can store intermittent renewable energy sources might change this in the future. Sodium-ion batteries would be both a cheap and environmentally friendly possibility. Prof. Dr. Stefano Passerini and his team at the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT) have developed a battery that…

Article - 29/02/2016

Biopower made from wastewater

Researchers worldwide are working to develop new technologies for producing clean energy. A team of researchers led by Sven Kerzenmacher at the University of Freiburg's Department of Microsystems Engineering (IMTEK) is interested in combining wastewater and bacteria, an approach that is both unusual and promising.

Article - 11/02/2016

Next-generation biofuels – economical and climate friendly

Alternatives for fossil fuels are urgently being sought. Prof. Dr. Ralf Kölling, a biotechnologist from the University of Hohenheim, and his team of scientists are working on a new, continuous method to produce bioethanol efficiently that could potentially overcome current drawbacks in biofuel production.

The ”EXI Startup Voucher” programme is jointly offered by Steinbeis-Beratungszentrum Existenzgründung and BIOPRO Baden-Württemberg and addresses company founders in the high-tech sector. BIOPRO Baden-Württemberg provides advice to company founders in the fields of life sciences, the healthcare industry and the bioeconomy.

Article - 21/12/2015

What to do with manure?

Pigs, cattle and poultry produce around 1,800 million tons of manure in Europe every year. Farmers provide crops with nutrients by spreading manure on their fields. But what can be done with manure when there are not enough fields to use it on? Researchers from the Fraunhofer Institute for Interfacial Engineering and Biotechnology (IGB) and the University of Hohenheim have joined forces with 13 partners from Germany, the Netherlands, Spain and…

Article - 11/11/2015

A metal enzyme that can cleave benzene rings

Aromatic rings are extremely stable and very difficult to break apart. Prof. Dr. Matthias Boll from the University of Freiburg’s Faculty of Biology and his team work with Geobacter metallireducens, a bacterium that can completely degrade aromatic compounds under strictly anaerobic conditions. While the biological degradation of aromatic hydrocarbons is of global relevance, the chemical resulting from the reduction of benzene rings could also be…

Energy transition - 28/09/2015

Biogas from unicellular green algae

Microalgae are among the most promising sources of sustainable, carbon-neutral biofuels for the future. They are already being used as feedstock for producing biogas, biodiesel, bioethanol and kerosene, but the associated production methods consume a great deal of energy and are rather costly. Dr. Nikolaos Boukis from the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT) is working on the development of a sophisticated, thermochemical process with an…

Article - 13/07/2015

Recovering phosphorus from sewage sludge

The chemical element phosphorus, which is mainly used as a fertiliser in agriculture, is a key building block for all life forms. Phosphorus cannot be substituted by other elements or produced synthetically. In addition, it is scarce on Earth and the majority of phosphate rock preserves are located in just a handful of countries. A European-wide research project on phosphorus recycling now presents ways of producing the precious raw material from…

Overview

Materials and chemicals

Biomass can be used to produce chemicals, fibres, pigments and plastics. These products are either identical to their petroleum-based counterparts or have completely new properties. Biorefineries will play a key role in the transition to a bioeconomy. There is great expectation placed on the potential ability to convert the countless carbon compounds in biomass into chemicals and material components.

Overview

Bioenergy

Examples of fuels produced from biomass are biomethane, renewable natural gas (RNG), biogenic hydrogen, biokerosene, biomethanol, bioethanol and higher alcohols. However, in future, care must be taken to avoid the well-documented conflict between crops used for food and those used for fuel production. The bioeconomy strategy therefore calls for only using the biomass that cannot be used for producing food. Microalgae, biowaste and residual…

Overview

Politics, ethics and economy

Agricultural land on Earth is limited. However, the increased need for food and feed coupled with the increasing use of biomass feedstocks leads to areas of conflict such as intensive farming, biodiversity loss, land grabbing and indirect land use change. Governments are faced with the major challenge of having to deal with and shape the bioeconomy while taking equally into account the ecological, economic and ethical concerns and integrating…

Overview

Biobased resources

A major goal of the bioeconomy is to use larger quantities of biobased raw materials to produce energy, transport fuels and feedstock for industrial processes. This requires detailed analyses, simulations, concepts and processes. Major focus needs to be placed on issues relating to crop production, biomass potentials, land surface requirements, conversion technologies, biobased value creation networks and food security. Agriculture, forestry,…

Overview

Baden-Württemberg and its companies

Bioeconomy refers to the sustainable management of renewable natural resources, which is why there is no such thing as a bioeconomy industry in the traditional sense. However, there are companies in Baden-Württemberg that use biomass as raw material base and have already developed products and processes in their effort to act more sustainably

Overview

What is a bioeconomy?

The bioeconomy, or biobased economy, is a new model for industry and the economy. It involves using renewable biological resources sustainably to produce food, energy and industrial goods. It also exploits the untapped potential stored within millions of tons of biological waste and residual materials.

Overview

Bioeconomy in Baden-Württemberg

Major impulses for the transition to a bioeconomy must come from the international and national level. This has been the case for Europe and Germany and is driven forward by programmes that have been launched by national and European governments

Article - 01/06/2015

Cyanobacteria: real all-rounders – biofuel producers and climate savers

Prof. Dr. Annegret Wilde and Prof. Dr. Wolfgang Hess from the Institute of Biology III at the University of Freiburg have been using the versatile cyanobacteria for quite some time. The two researchers are part of the project "Cyanosys - Systems biology of cyanobacterial biofuel production", which aims to use cyanobacteria for the large-scale production of biofuels from sunlight and carbon dioxide.

Article - 01/12/2014

wusoa GmbH: What shall we do with manure? Liquid manure for decentralized small-scale biogas plants.

Biogas has become an alternative and sustainable energy resource. In 2013, the 7,850 biogas plants in Germany – including 858 in Baden-Württemberg – produced enough biogas to cover around seven percent of Germany’s total electricity needs. Martin Falger, managing director of wusoa GmbH in Stuttgart, explained in an interview with Sanja Fessl (BIOPRO) why he believes that small-scale biogas plants have a promising future. They expand the biogas…

Article - 03/11/2014

Modern biogas plant in a picturesque landscape

Biogas plants have become well-known sights throughout Germany and are usually built according to standardised concepts. The biogas plant that is currently being constructed in the village of Zermatt below the Matterhorn presented the GICON Großmann Ingenieur Consult GmbH planners with a particular challenge. The geographical and climatic conditions of the area and seasonal waste variations due to seasonally fluctuating tourist numbers required…

The performance and application range of biobased lubricants is growing ever broader. Several biolubricants have been placed on the market, including plant-oil based products and synthetic plant-based lubricants. In this article, Rolf Luther from FUCHS EUROPE SCHMIERSTOFFE GmbH in Mannheim talks about the technical properties and potential application areas of biolubricants, some of which have been shown to be superior to conventional crude…