The Fraunhofer institutes UMSICHT in Sulzbach-Rosenberg, IGB in Straubing, and IWKS in Alzenau are collaborating on a hub for circular carbon technologies in Bavaria. The focus is on technologies for tapping non-fossil carbon sources, for recycling and sequestering carbon in products, and for integrating these technologies into existing energy and economic cycles.
Objective: Knowledge and innovation transfer, as well as an ongoing dialogue between science, industry, and society.
To counteract climate change and ensure energy and raw material security in Germany, energy production must be decarbonized as much as possible, and the raw materials sector must be defossilized. Both goals can be achieved through the transformation of the economy and society from linear to circular value creation systems. Carbon and hydrogen are the most important connecting elements in this process.
Through the development of technologies and partnership structures, carbon-containing products are to be produced, used, and reused in a more sustainable manner than before. In addition to sequestering carbon in products, this approach aims to achieve significant CO₂ savings in the energy, chemical, and mobility sectors.
The hub’s long-term goal is to establish local application and demonstration centers for Circular Carbon Technologies. These will serve as scale-up centers for industry, bringing the technologies to commercial application and integrating them into regional production and value-added networks.
The hub project is funded through 2027 by the Bavarian Ministry of Economic Affairs, Regional Development and Energy. Industry needs and interest are continuously evaluated.
Experimental work will also be conducted to demonstrate the technical feasibility of regional carbon cycles using three examples:
The goal of the three subprojects “RePaBe,” “RePaKu,” and “ARCHEM-SLF” is to produce basic chemicals for the chemical industry – specifically for methacrylates, plasticizers, and high-performance polymers – which can then be reused by the Bavarian automotive and automotive supplier industries.
At the same time, the institutes participating in the hub are working to increasingly involve the regional economy in the research. Externally, the CCT Hub aims to position itself internationally as an innovation network for Circular Carbon Technologies.
An industry advisory board is supporting the project in its current phase. Its members contribute specific expertise to the hub from the fields of plant engineering, the automotive supply industry, original equipment manufacturers (OEMs), the paper industry, and the chemical industry. The industry representatives also serve as key drivers in shaping the design of the planned scale-up research infrastructure, into which the hub is intended to transition.
Residues from the paper industry are produced in large quantities and vary greatly in their properties. This results in high disposal costs.
In the “RePaBe” project, sustainable basic chemicals and fuels are produced from heterogeneous fiber residues and rejects from the paper industry.
Thermochemical conversion processes (pyrolysis) transform the residual materials (e.g., paper sludge) and rejects (containing plastic, mineral, or metal components) into new valuable materials: basic chemicals, hydrocarbons, and solids, so-called carbonized material.
The pulp industry generates large quantities of waste materials, which entail high disposal costs.
One by-product is crude terpin. It contains so-called monoterpenes – chemical compounds derived from wood, such as pine, which are used in paper production.
In the “RePaKu” project, monoterpenes are used as an alternative, sustainable source of raw materials for the production of new plastics in the automotive and chemical industries.
Diverse applications of monoterpenes:
Light shredder fractions (SLF) from end-of-life vehicle recycling have so far seen little high-value utilization.
In the “ARCHEM-SLF” project, these residual materials are recovered as an alternative raw material source for the automotive or chemical industries.
An AI-supported pre-sorting process effectively separates the shredder residues. A pyrolysis process with an integrated cyclization step converts them into pyrolysis oil with a high content of BTEX aromatics.
Various aromatics are fractionated from the oil through distillation. These serve as raw materials for the production of new plastics such as polystyrene, PET, or polycarbonate, which are used in the automotive industry.
This reduces disposal costs while simultaneously enabling compliance with mandated recycling quotas through the use of high-quality recyclates.
Fraunhofer Institute for Environmental, Safety and Energy Technology UMSICHT