Press releases

More than 450 international experts in the field of sophisticated car safety systems exchanged views on product innovations and new trends from industry, research and development at the Airbag Symposium 2022 in Mannheim from 28 to 30 November. The symposium was complemented by a top-class trade exhibition with 26 exhibitors.

Under the motto "Get into the loop", an international circular economy community will meet for the first time in Munich on February 8 and 9, 2023, at the Fraunhofer CCPE Summit under the leadership of UMSICHT Institute Director Prof. Manfred Renner. It is the starting signal for an international forum that promotes the exchange of solution ideas and innovations for a circular plastics economy. Program details and a registration form can be found on the website of Fraunhofer CCPE. For about four years, six Fraunhofer institutes have been dedicated in the Fraunhofer Cluster of Excellence Circular Plastics Economy CCPE to the question of how the value chain of plastics can be made circular.

Energy is scarce – and like all scarce things, it comes at a price. That is why Germany needs to greatly reduce its energy consumption. There is significant potential for this in the area of heating and cooling energy which accounts for a large proportion of Germany’s energy consumption. Innovative materials that can be programmed to control heat transition can be a valuable tool in this scenario. The use of materials like these could, for instance, save up to 40 percent of the energy used to cool single-family homes.

Ground-breaking energy storage technology will give old fossil power plants a new future as green batteries. The springboard is a new joint European project in Bornholm, Denmark, which aims to show that long-term storage of wind and solar energy is possible on a large scale. The goal is to lower the price of storage significantly, and thereby accelerate the green transition.

At the world's leading trade fair for the process industry, ACHEMA in Frankfurt am Main, the Fraunhofer alliance for the chemistry lead market will present itself to the industry as a strong partner thanks to its combined expertise. From August 22 to 26, 2022, the participating institutes will showcase their current joint research activities, which focus on several areas. These include the digitalization of chemical processes, further development of green chemistry, facilitation of scale-up, safety and regulatory issues, and the efficiency of chemical processes as well as the development of a circular economy.

For the last year, ten European and Japanese research expert organisations have been working together on the LAURELIN project to develop innovative processes to convert CO₂ in renewable methanol.

The PREDATOR research project aims to develop a reliable HP-RTM process for industrial large-scale production using intelligent data processing systems.

Plastic recyclates, like materials from the recycling bin, often have unpleasant odors due to their composition or due to impurities. This means that they are currently unsuitable for many applications, especially indoors.

The rapid transfer of theoretical knowledge into profitable industrial applications and services: with this guiding principle, the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT) and the Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft are conducting joint research in the Karlsruhe Research Factory at the KIT East Campus. The digitalization of production and the possibilities of artificial intelligence are the focus of the research work, which is based on close cooperation with industrial partners. The partners opened the new development and demonstration center today (March 28, 2022) together with Baden-Württemberg's State Governor Winfried Kretschmann, Science Minister Theresia Bauer and Economics Minister Dr. Nicole Hoffmeister-Kraut, and around 400 representatives from politics, science and industry.