Press releases | News

Patients with severe respiratory or lung diseases require intensive treatment and their lung function needs to be monitored on a continuous basis. As part of the Pneumo.Vest project, Fraunhofer researchers have developed a technology whereby noises in the lungs are recorded using a textile vest with integrated acoustic sensors. The signals are then converted and displayed visually using software. In this way, patients outside of intensive care units can still be monitored continuously. The technology increases the options for diagnosis and improves the patient’s quality of life.

To convert food scraps and other biological waste back into usable materials, the Fraunhofer Institute for Ceramic Technologies and Systems IKTS, together with industry and research partners, built a facility in Thallwitz near Leipzig that is unique worldwide. It produces synthetic fuels and biogenic waxes from biogas – not only from the contained CO₂. The biogas is obtained from old fats used in catering and food production. If required, a ceramic electrolyzer can be connected, which also provides the required substances for the process using electricity from renewable energies. IKTS now intends to further develop the innovative plant concept for industrial-scale production in cooperation with a Leipzig-based company.

Research into new, forward-looking approaches to a safe and sustainable water supply is being promoted in Thuringia in the long term. The Thuringian Water Innovation Cluster (ThWIC), jointly initiated by the Friedrich Schiller University Jena, the Fraunhofer Institute for Ceramic Technologies and Systems IKTS and the Ernst Abbe University of Applied Sciences Jena, prevailed in the final round of the Clusters4Future competition and will be funded by the Federal Ministry of Education and Research from 2023 onwards. This means that over the next nine years, up to 45 million euros in funding will flow into the development of new water technologies and research into how society deals with this increasingly scarce resource.

On Wednesday, June 29, 2022, the InSignA High-Performance center was officially opened at the Fraunhofer Institute for Digital Media Technology IDMT in Ilmenau. Due to Corona, the official opening could only take place one year after the actual project start. Five Thuringian Fraunhofer Institutes, the TU Ilmenau and the IMMS Institut für Mikroelektronik- und Mechatronik-Systeme gemeinnützige GmbH have already been working together in the performance center since March 2021. Together with businesses, the performance center aims to bring solution approaches in the field of sensor technology and signal analysis into application. IKTS with its Battery Innovation and Technology Center BITC in Arnstadt contributes, among other things, to the pre-processing and optimization of data sets.

Shipping is one of the fastest-growing sources of greenhouse gases, and this is leading shipbuilders and operators on a search for environmentally friendly alternative propulsion systems. Researchers at Fraunhofer have joined forces with partners to develop the HyMethShip concept, in which hydrogen is obtained from methanol. This technology does not require large hydrogen tanks to be carried on board, making it much safer. In the future, it may also prove to be an attractive solution for cruise liners.

Sasol and Helmholtz-Zentrum Berlin (HZB) will lead a consortium to develop and optimize next-generation catalysts that will play a key role in decarbonizing the aviation sector through sustainable aviation fuels (SAF). Fraunhofer IKTS will contribute know-how in the development and shaping of Fischer-Tropsch catalysts to the project.

The availability of water of suitable quality is a growing challenge worldwide. A number of processes are available for the treatment and processing of industrial and municipal wastewater, which are adapted to the substances contained in the wastewater. The treatment of wastewater containing salts represents a particular challenge, as the separation of salt and water requires a very high technical and energy input. By separating salts from water, they can be put to further use and the discharge of saline wastewater into water bodies can be reduced or even avoided altogether. Using the example of saline leachates from residual waste piles in the potash industry, the “HaSiMem” project will investigate whether the membrane distillation process is advantageous compared to the classic form of evaporation of saline wastewater. The joint project, which is funded by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research, is headed by K-UTEC AG Salt Technologies and will be implemented over the next three years with the partners Fraunhofer Institute for Ceramic Technologies and Systems IKTS, Solarspring GmbH, K+S AG and LMBV mbH.

Prof. Alexander Michaelis, Director of the Fraunhofer Institute for Ceramic Technologies and Systems IKTS, received the prestigious "Acta Materialia Hollomon Award for Materials and Society" and the "Rustum Roy Lecture Award". Both awards recognize his commitment to the materials sciences for the benefit of society.

The separation of substance mixtures is a basic technical and biological operation. Nature uses a variety of membranes for substance separation, such as vessel walls, cell walls or membrane proteins. In industrial and technical applications, however, conventional separation processes still dominate: distillation/rectification, extraction, crystallization or adsorption/absorption. Compared to these processes, membrane separation requires only a fraction of the energy. With the material properties adapted to the separation task in each case, membranes are an ideal solution for many applications. It is worth investing in membrane development. This is what DGMT Deutsche Gesellschaft für Membrantechnik e.V., VDI Verein Deutscher Ingenieure e.V. and the ProcessNet specialist group Membrane Technology of DECHEMA Gesellschaft für Chemische Technik und Biotechnologie e.V., advocate in their current position paper. The results of the investigations of the German Ceramic Society (DKG) and the German Society for Materials Science (DGM) have also been included here.

On March 28th, 2022, Prof. Dr. Henning Heuer, head of department Systems for Testing and Analysis at Fraunhofer IKTS, signed a Memorandum of Understanding in Dresden. The contractual partner is Samyong Inspection Engineering from Seoul, Korea. The agreement is aimed at close R&D collaboration to increase safety of nuclear fuel rods using non-destructive testing (NDT).

Glass objects which glow in the dark, glass containers that heat up and cool down, or glass control knobs and switches that eliminate viruses and bacteria by themselves – all this seems to completely contradict our everyday experience of what glass can do. And yet, it is now within reach. To create such functionalized and precision-molded glasses, research teams at Fraunhofer IKTS in Dresden have transferred their experience with ceramic processes to glass manufacturing.

The Fraunhofer Institute for Ceramic Technologies and Systems IKTS recently became a partner in the TWI Innovation Network (TWIIN), a European program to promote research and technology.

Our colleague Johanna Sonnenberg talks about her personal and professional involvement in the fight against microplastics, how an underwater vehicle is supposed to help, and what everyone can do to prevent pollution of the sea and from beaches.

On January 5th, 2022, Dr. Roland Weidl, head of the Battery Innovation and Technology Center BITC, signed a Memorandum of Understanding on behalf of IKTS Institute Director Prof. Alexander Michaelis. The contractual partners are Hyundai Heavy Industries (HHI) and Korea Shipbuilding and Offshore Engineering (KSOE). In the MoU, the cooperating parties agree on close R&D collaboration in the fields of hydrogen, fuel cells (especially SOFC), e-fuels and digitalization.

The joint project LEGIOPLAS, funded by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF), is developing a mobile measurement system for on-site analysis of Legionella contamination in drinking water.

Germany must become climate-neutral by 2045 – that is the target set by the German government's Climate Protection Act. This ambitious goal requires the transformation of energy generation to 100% renewable energy from wind, solar, hydropower and biomass. This energy generation, which will be more and more volatile in the future, requires stabilizing measures to ensure a secure energy supply. Electricity storage in batteries can enable this transformation and will become increasingly important. In the project “KeNaB-ART” (ceramic-based sodium battery with beta-aluminate for applications above room temperature), the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research is supporting the development of new ceramic sodium batteries for the storage of renewable energy in the funding initiative “Battery 2020 Transfer”.

Congratulations to Nadja Steinke on the Silicon Science Award 2021! With her dissertation entitled “Plasmonic sensor for the on-site detection of diclofenac molecules” she convinced the jury. The award ceremony takes place on December 8, 2021 during the 15th Dresden Sensor Symposium.

A defective heart valve is the second most common form of heart disease. Most cases involve a narrowed aortic valve, but often the mitral valve can also be affected. Prostheses significantly increase the life expectancy of those with the disease. While bioprosthetic heart valves have some advantages over me-chanical ones, they can become calcified relatively quickly, limiting the length of their useful life. A team of researchers at the Fraunhofer Institute for Ceramic Technologies and Systems IKTS is attempting to prevent such calcification with a new chemical pretreatment of the bioprostheses.

The global demand for water is increasing due to ever more intensive water use. At the same time, the usable water supply is becoming progressively smaller. To ensure that water does not slow down key industries, the energy transition and food security, several research groups at the Fraunhofer Institute for Ceramic Technologies and Systems IKTS are working on projects that at-tempt to solve current problems in the water, agriculture, and energy sectors in a holistic approach. One goal here is to use wastewater as a resource. This in-cludes, for example, new recycling methods for municipal and mining wastewater, which can provide important raw materials for sustainable agricul-ture as well as for the growing demand for hydrogen.

The automotive industry is undergoing an unprecedented transformation process: the emergence of electromobility in conjunction with advancing digitalization and the introduction of Industry 4.0 technologies are changing the sector significantly. As the industry changes, so do the demands on the professions that are deployed here. In the project “BeaT - Renewing Vocational Training for the Automotive Transformation”, funded by the German Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Energy, Fraunhofer IKTS and its partners are investigating which new qualification requirements the change in the automotive sector brings with it and how these requirements can be served in modern education and training programs. In collaboration with IKTS, the Institute of Sociology and the Service Center Research and Transfer of the Friedrich Schiller University Jena as well as the network automotive thüringen e.V. are partners.