It is considered the "leading trade fair for the process industry": Every three years, now delayed by a year due to the pandemic, the "Exhibition Conference for Chemical Apparatus Engineering" – better known as ACHEMA – takes place in Frankfurt with 2,200 exhibitors from 50 countries. The Technical University of Mittelhessen (THM) is a regular participant, and under the leadership of Prof. Dirk Holtmann from the Department of Life Science Engineering, it will also be present at this year's event from August 22nd to 26th. The THMpresence will focus on two exhibits by doctoral students Alexander Langsdorf and Björn Sabel-Becker. They will present ideas for greater sustainability in the chemical industry. "To be able to present these projects to such a high-caliber, international audience is already a special honor and a great opportunity," says Holtmann.
Langsdorf from the Institute for Bioprocess Engineering and Pharmaceutical Technology is working on alternative recycling methods for green waste as part of the "GreenToGreen - municipal green waste as the basis for green chemistry" project funded by the Federal Ministry of Research (BMBF). Project partners are the Technical University of Kaiserslautern and ifn FTZ GmbH. While the more than five million tons of municipal green waste annually throughout Germany are currently mostly composted or used in biogas plants, "GreenToGreen" aims to use it as a raw material for higher-quality products in the sense of green chemistry. Fossil raw materials can be replaced by using biomass as a raw material for basic and fine chemicals. At the ACHEMA, the various possibilities for increasing the added value from green waste will be shown.
Like the raw materials for the chemical industry from CO2 and electrical energy can be produced efficiently, asks the BMBF project “Games – gas diffusion electrodes for coupled microbial-electrochemical syntheses from CO2' by Sabel Becker. The starting point is a gas diffusion electrode where CO 2 is reduced to formate, a salt of formic acid, by means of excess, ideally renewable energy. The formate can then be used biotechnologically in various processes to synthesize valuable materials, such as bio-based plastics, amino acids, aromas, basic chemicals or alternative fuels. The project is about optimizing the processes on the one hand and demonstrating that the principle can also be applied on an industrial scale on the other.
“These projects show that there are many ways to make production processes in the chemical industry more sustainable,” says Prof. Holtmann, member of the Centre of Competence for Sustainable Engineering and Environmental Systems (ZEuUS) at THM. He and his doctoral students are convinced that this is not only good for the environment, but also for company finances in the medium term. They show their exhibits at stands A76 and A74 in Hall 6.0 at Messe Frankfurt.
Free tickets: With the code A_WcQKSPvX you can participate in ACHEMA free of charge. With this code can under https://www.achema.de/en/for-visitors/tickets a myACHEMA account must be created in order to redeem the ticket voucher. The code can be used indefinitely, so it may be passed on to interested parties.