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How do we sustainably supply a growing human population on our planet with food, energy and water? How useful are decentralized, regional solutions for this? The vision of a future factory in Lusatia aims to provide answers to questions like these. In an interview, our experts Prof. Michael Stelter and Dr. Burkhardt Faßauer explain exactly how their water management concepts will be implemented.

Global shipping, powered in most cases with toxic bunker fuel, is a pollutant which has received little attention. At IKTS, alternative, eco-friendly ship propulsion systems are being developed with stakeholders of the shipping industry.

Even though the earth is known as the “blue planet”, only 2.5 % of its water is freshwater. And of this portion only a third can be used as drinking water. The resource is scarce and unevenly distributed: More than 2 billion people on earth live without access to clean water at home. To highlight this water crisis, the United Nations host World Water Day every year on March 22, accompanied by campaigns and activities of governmental and non-governmental organizations. We talked to Dr. Patrick Bräutigam, group manager of the working group “Reaction Engineering Water” at IKTS and head of the group “Water Technology” at the Friedrich-Schiller-Universität Jena about how research institutions can contribute to the fight against the water crisis, why the resource must also be protected in industrialized countries and which technologies will become relevant in the future.

In a matter of life and death, every minute counts. If patients are treated on-site, for example at the scene of an accident, their chances of survival are increased significantly. To ensure that emergency physicians can make the right diagnosis quickly, mobile ultrasound equipment is used, among other things. This means that necessary treatment steps can be initiated at the scene of the accident.

Surely you too have asked yourself whether batteries for e-mobility are really safe; especially when they are in your own car. In order to perform quality assurance faster and more efficiently in the future, we are developing x-ray and thermography systems with which individual battery components can already be inspected during production.

Fit and agile until old age. We all dream of it. However, the older people get, the more likely the need for medicines will rise. It is not only age but also the increase in mental and psychosomatic illnesses or the intake of hormones that increases the need for pharmaceutical preparations. And take a loot at our lifestyle: the use of antibiotics in factory farming for meat fattening does its own thing.

Water covers two thirds of the earth's surface, making our earth the blue planet. Oceans and seas provide half of the oxygen we breathe and absorb one third of the carbon dioxide we produce. They control the climate, are economic and living space.

We Germans love our "liquid bread". Especially in a sociable Christmassy round a blond is something fine! By the way: We Germans believe that we are THE beer nation. However, this is not quite true. Because at least as far as drinking is concerned, Czechs consume more. But where does beer come from? And can the rather perfect brewing process still be further optimized?

So Rumplestiltskin's dream does come true after all! Straw can be turned into today’s gold: energy. As a biogenic waste material, straw contributes to a sustainable energy balance and supports the path towards energy production from predominantly renewable energies. It also reduces the amount of maize or other products that should be used to feed the world's hunger and not to provide energy. How is electricity produced from straw, you ask? Let us take a look at it.

Do you like milk? Many among us like it. On average, each of us drank about 52 litres in 2015 - according to figures from the German Dairy Industry Association. Not enough for that. On top of that came 6 kilograms of butter, 17 kilograms of yoghurt and 25 kilograms of cheese per head. During the production of the various dairy products, residual materials are produced that cause high disposal costs, either half or unused. A pity about that! Because they are valuable, provided we can feed them into a closed recycling circuit.