Bioeconomy

Fossil resources such as crude oil and natural gas are currently still indispensable as starting materials for the production of basic chemicals. However, in view of global population growth and rising living standards, the current oil-based economy is reaching its limits, especially with regard to climate-relevant environmental aspects. For example, the use of fossil raw materials has contributed significantly to an increase in atmospheric carbon dioxide or the littering of the oceans. And the availability of fossil resources is limited.   

Biomass represents an alternative and renewable raw material basis for the production of chemical products. Its use and conversion is the basis of a biobased economy, in short bioeconomy. The aim is to bring economy and ecology into harmony to the greatest possible extent – in other words, to make processes both environmentally compatible and economical so that new processes can be applied on a large scale as quickly as possible. If renewable raw materials, biogenic residues – or directly carbon dioxide (CO₂) – are used instead of fossil carbon sources for the production of chemicals, this helps to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and protect the climate, thus enabling the implementation of sustainability goals in the sense of a sustainable bioeconomy in the future.

On the occasion of the IBISBA workshop “New technologies as accelerator of a sustainable bioeconomy” at the Global Bioeconomy Summit 2020, Dr. Markus Wolperdinger explores the question of how the implementation of a sustainable bioeconomy can be accelerated.

He highlights the advantages of a bioeconomy, shows possible applications of the bioeconomy and approaches at the Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft, and finally elaborates on the measures that can be taken to implement the bioeconomy as a new economic system more quickly in industrial reality and at the same time meet the Sustainable Development Goals.

Find out about current projects in which we are developing processes for manufacturing sustainable and biodegradable products. Find out about our activities to use alternative resources such as microalgae, renewable raw materials and biogenic residues, to recycle valuable materials or recover them for reuse. Discover as our company partner here the possibilities for your contemporary production.  

• Microalgae biorefinery
  Project FuTuReS – Economic and ecological evaluation of a biorefinery approach for the production of fucoxanthin and EPA on a pilot scale and transdisciplinary developed scenarios on an industrial scale in Germany
  
• Production of valuable substances (omega-3 fatty acids (EPA), fucoxanthin) for cosmetics, food and feed
  Project MIATEST – Functional ingredients from algae for health-promoting food and as plant strengthening agent in viticulture
  
• Efficient extraction processes for the processing of valuable substances
  
• New modularized reactor concept and intelligent control
• Scaling of microalgae-based processes and customized production of functional ingredients

• Synthesis of biobased monomers and polymers
• Building blocks from terpenes
  Project TerPa – Terpenes as building blocks for biobased polyamides
  
• Insect biorefinery – holistic use of insect skins, proteins and fats
  Project ChitoTex – Development and production of new insect chitosan and chitosan based functional coatings for yarns and textile fabrics
  
• Biopolymers for packaging materials
  Microbially produced biodegradable biopolymer; the producing microorganisms are able to transform sustainable carbon sources like methane from the biogas production, sugars derived from cellulose and hemicellulose from forestry and agricultural residues, and glycerol resulting from biodiesel production.
  Project SusPackaging – Sustainable production of polyhydroxyalkanoates (PHA) for packaging materials

• Microbial biosurfactant production
  using renewable raw materials such as lignocellulose-based sugar solutions or vegetable oils as substrate in the culture medium
  
• Optimization of the fermentative production of biosurfactants
  Project SurfGlyco – Improved strategies for the biotechnological production of tailor-made biosurfactants
• Selection and optimization of biocatalysts
• Scale-up to pilot plant scale to m³

• Recovery of CO₂
  Project Celbicon – Cost-effective carbon dioxide conversion into chemicals and
  Project CO₂EXIDE – CO₂-based electrosynthesis of ethylene oxide
  
• Electricity-based fuels and chemicals
  Project SynLink – Synthetic e-fuels as key enabler for sector linking
  Fraunhofer Electrolysis Platform Leuna ELP; Hy2Chem platform
  

• Flexible production of bioenergy
  Project NextGenBiogas – Flexible production of bioenergy can contribute stability for power grids
  
• Water reuse
  Project Hypowave – Water reuse in agriculture