CLIB webinar “Bio-Driven Innovation: Shaping the Sustainable Automotive Industry”

Earlier this week, we welcomed over 130 participants to our newest CLIB webinar

In context of our Triple-S project, we identify and promote interfaces where biotechnology has not yet realised its full potential. Aiming to cross-link stakeholders from the automotive industry (OEMs and suppliers) with innovative technology or material providers, we invited speakers from BMW, Denso, and VW Group to showcase selected innovation challenges.

Annika Bülow (Ceresana) set the scene by describing in her overview presentation where biotechnology or bio-based materials are already used in today’s cars and where possible future applications could evolve.

Thomas Gerstl (BMW) presented renewable materials that are already used in the car interior and how, e.g., wooden panels need to be coated to meet the resilience and durability needs for a car being over 20 years in use.

Christian Bergs (Denso) focused on the recyclability and reusability of single car components. Taking into account the end-of-life of cars requires multiple new functionalities like easy disassembling or debonding of glued components. Here, biotechnology could provide promising solutions.

Finally, Lena Ullmann (VW Group) presented the activities of the Project House Bioengineering, a working group at VW dedicated to exploit the possibilities and advances of biotechnology in a variety of directions, e.g., reducing environmental impact, use of sustainable materials, or recycling and waste reduction.

Followed by these introductory talks, the listening participants switched to active mode in the second half of the webinar. In separate break-out rooms, specific innovation challenges were discussed with the speakers.

The first BMW challenge, the enzymatic recycling of polymers, addressed many actors from the CLIB network to contribute their ideas for solutions, as well as depicting clear limitations of enzyme use for depolymerisation. A vision might be to integrate several different technologies (chemical, mechanical, enzymatic) to depolymerise crystalline polymers down to monomer size. In the second BMW challenge, biobased coatings impulses were collected on how to achieve longevity of bio-based materials while keeping their recyclability.

The two challenges provided by Denso dealt with the recyclability of bio-based materials and innovative solutions for switchable adhesives. Concerning the recycling at the end-of-life of a car and re-use of materials, the issue must be tackled across brands and companies as the cars cannot easily be separated by their brand in their final destinations. Connections in the CLIB network were established to discuss concrete solutions for adhesives that are switchable by temperature or electricity. This will be essential to recover materials during recycling in view of the upcoming End of Life vehicles directive.

In the two challenges proposed by the VW Group the participants had as well the chance to connect with our speaker directly. We discussed about new technologies for polymers produced using CO₂ as a feedstock and about enzymatic recycling technologies to meet the upcoming recycling quota for the sector. Both challenges were answered with several proposed solutions, a lot of networking offers and hopefully fruitful collaboration.

In summary, the webinar was an ideal opportunity to make contacts between the automotive and the biotech world and many follow-up meetings have already been scheduled. A big thank you to all presenters and participants!

 

This event is in the past.