Environmental Engineering

The Environmental Engineering Department is focused on the development of sustainable synthesis, production and recovery processes, and on the qualification of technical products according to standardized or advanced and customer-specific testing procedures. The development of modern, sustainable processes requires a highly efficient use of existing resources combined with the exploitation of new material sources, such as sustainable raw materials, for the manufacture of new products.

Research areas in the Environmental Engineering Department

 

Additive chemistry (AddChem)

The group for additive chemistry synthesizes and evaluates plastic additives, in particular flame retardants, odor retardants, loop-closing additives and compounds for electrochemistry and electrolysis. In close exchange with other research groups at Fraunhofer ICT, we support partners from academia and industry in the research and development of materials, processes, products, test methods and simulation.

 

Bioeconomy (BioEco)

A society must be ecologically responsible and socially just. The aim of our group is to encourage them with the principle of green chemistry for a circular bioeconomy.

 

Environmental simulation and product qualification

The research group for environmental simulation and production qualification uses specially-developed testing units to simulate environmental influences on products and materials. The effects of these influences are measured and evaluated. Tailored tests are also developed.

 

Recycling technologies (RecTec)

The Recycling Technologies group deals with the separation, shredding and sorting of waste in preparation for mechanical recycling, solvent-based recycling and chemical recycling, such as solvolysis and pyrolysis.

 

Analytics

The analytics group in the Environmental Engineering Department works on the analysis of natural materials, polymer products and mineral components in recycled materials. Investigations using GC-MS, LC-MS, GPC, EA and ICP-OES are carried out for example on lignins, sugars, fats and platform chemicals for synthesis.

 

Sustainability and Circularity Assessment (SuCA)

The Sustainability and Circularity Assessment (SuCA) group supports your developments with life cycle assessments (LCA), life cycle cost analyses (LCC) and the development of recycling concepts for your products, processes and materials. Our goal is to identify improvement potentials along the life cycle during development and to close existing information gaps for reliable balances (e.g. from recycling).