Han­nov­er Uni­ver­sity of Applied Sci­ences and Arts — Insti­tute for Bioplastics and Biocom­pos­ites (IfBB)

The IfBB — Insti­tute for Bioplastics and Biocom­pos­ites belongs to the Fac­ulty II — Mech­an­ic­al Engin­eer­ing and Biopro­cess Engin­eer­ing of the Han­nov­er Uni­ver­sity of Applied Sci­ences and Arts at the Ahlem site and was foun­ded in 2011 because of stead­ily grow­ing activities.

IfBB’s main research areas are the devel­op­ment, pro­cessing and indus­tri­al use of bioplastics and biocomposites.

The focus of the institute’s work is on the pro­duc­tion and use of biopoly­mers, cel­lu­lose-based nat­ur­al fibers and ther­mo­plastic com­pos­ites. In this field, research is con­duc­ted, among oth­er things, on tar­geted and applic­a­tion-ori­ented mater­i­al devel­op­ments as well as the adapt­a­tion of pro­cessing meth­ods for these nov­el mater­i­als. Anoth­er focus is the char­ac­ter­iz­a­tion of bio­ma­ter­i­als avail­able on the mar­ket and the pro­vi­sion of tech­nic­al mater­i­al para­met­ers as well as mar­ket data and applic­a­tion examples.

The team led by Prof. Dr.-Ing. Hans-Josef Endres col­lab­or­ates closely with industry. Intens­ive cooper­a­tion is tak­ing place along the entire pro­cess chain, i.e., from chem­ic­al mater­i­al and for­mu­la­tion devel­op­ment through machine man­u­fac­tur­ers and pro­cess optim­iz­a­tion to bioplastics pro­cessing com­pan­ies and users, such as the auto­mot­ive industry and com­pan­ies in the waste dis­pos­al sector.