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Aero­gel-it and Fiben­ol Col­lab­or­ate for Sus­tain­able Superinsulation

10.03.2023

The founders of the Osnab­rück-based star­tup aero­gel-it have taken a tech­no­logy ori­gin­ally developed by the chem­ic­al com­pany BASF a step fur­ther. Togeth­er with cooper­a­tion part­ner Prof. Dr. Irina Smirnova from the Tech­nic­al Uni­ver­sity of Ham­burg-Har­burg and oth­er part­ners, the young com­pany is fur­ther devel­op­ing the insu­lat­ing mater­i­al. A new gen­er­a­tion of cost-effi­cient and intel­li­gent aero­gel pro­duc­tion tech­no­logy is to be cre­ated. With the highly effi­cient aero­gel insu­la­tion mater­i­al, which is also made of bio­lo­gic­al mater­i­als, the start-up from Osnab­rück wants to con­trib­ute to decar­bon­iz­a­tion and energy effi­ciency in the build­ing sec­tor. The pro­ject is fun­ded by the Ger­man Fed­er­al Envir­on­ment­al Found­a­tion (DBU).


The col­lab­or­a­tion with Fiben­ol has now enabled aero­gel-it to devel­op a bioaero­gel based on a new gen­er­a­tion of lignin pro­duced by Fiben­ol dir­ectly from bio­mass. Like estab­lished silica aero­gel products, lignin bioaero­gel offers super­insu­la­tion prop­er­ties and reduces heat trans­fer with­in the tiny, nano­met­er-sized pores com­pared to con­ven­tion­al insu­la­tion mater­i­als. Lignin bioaero­gel has a sig­ni­fic­antly lower CO2 foot­print of up to 95% while being 100% bio-based. aero­gel-it has under­taken research and devel­op­ment efforts to ensure the sus­tain­ab­il­ity of its products by using raw mater­i­als from loc­al nat­ur­al and non-food sources.

The col­lab­or­a­tion between aero­gel-it and Fiben­ol is a good example for oth­er com­pan­ies that want to use bio­ma­ter­i­als in their value chain. Even though the col­lab­or­a­tion is still in its early stages and fur­ther research and devel­op­ment is needed, this is a great step for­ward for the industry. The use of these bio­ma­ter­i­als can lead to more sus­tain­able products with improved thermal insu­la­tion prop­er­ties and lower car­bon foot­prints. Com­pan­ies should strive to use as much bio­ma­ter­i­al as pos­sible without com­prom­ising on product qual­ity and sus­tain­ab­il­ity. By using these bio­ma­ter­i­als in their value chain, com­pan­ies can reduce their envir­on­ment­al foot­print and make a pos­it­ive con­tri­bu­tion to the green revolu­tion.

Aero­gel-it sees even more poten­tial uses for its new super­insu­la­tion mater­i­al than for build­ing insu­la­tion: accord­ing to Fricke, the bio-super­insu­la­tion mater­i­al from Osnab­rück can also be used in refri­ger­at­ors and func­tion­al cloth­ing in the future. Depend­ing on the applic­a­tion, the star­tup could pro­duce powder, gran­ules or boards. With the DBU fund­ing, the five-mem­ber team wants to advance research and test pro­to­types. ​“We want to estab­lish ourselves on the mar­ket as the world’s first bio aero­gel com­pany and serve our cus­tom­ers as quickly as pos­sible,” says Dr. Marc Fricke, CEO and co-founder of aero­gel-it. Next year, the com­pany also plans to start up its own pro­duc­tion facil­ity in Wal­len­horst in the dis­trict of Osnab­rück. For this, aero­gel-it is cur­rently look­ing for investors.


Source

aero­gel PR

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