Wandel weiterdenken – AUFBRUCH Summer Event

On July 10, the Summer Event of our graduate cluster AUFBRUCH took place in Aachen. In the first year, we have learnt a lot about the current situation in the Rhenish Mining Area, visited the Garzweiler opencast lignite mining and some directly affected municipalities. Now, it was time to “think ahead”.

 

The introductory words of Aachen District Mayor Marianne Conradt made it clear that structural change is by no means a new topic for Aachen. Over the decades, many industries had to face sometimes dramatic changes. The once important textile industry has disappeared long ago but has left behind strong innovative institutions such as the DWI or the ITA at RWTH Aachen, which are now spawning startups and developing future technologies. Of the needle industry, however, only the traditional greeting “Klenkes” has remained for Aachen.  As second opening, Dr. Kira Kauffmann (MWIKE) gave a well-founded classification of the anchor project AUFBRUCH in the economic and sustainability policy of North Rhine-Westphalia: New technologies, excellent specialists, and forward-looking start-ups are crucial to achieve the ambitious goals.

 

Afterwards, four speakers from other regions within Germany who have already gone through transformation processes or are also in the middle of transformation gave us the opportunity to look beyond our own noses: Prof. Manfred Renner (Fraunhofer UMSICHT) showed the transformation that the Ruhr area (and especially the city of Oberhausen) has undergone over the decades and the important role that UMSICHT currently plays in this.

 

Dr. Thomas Maurer from the Research Alliance “Land-Innovation-Lausitz” spoke about Lusatia’s structural change and emphasised how much the consequences of climate change are already being felt in the region. To establish a sustainable bioeconomy, climate-adapted land use with new value creation paths is therefore unavoidable. These new value chains are also necessary to compensate for the negative effects of structural change and the decline of fossil-based industries.

 

Prof. Manfred Kircher (KADIB / BioBall e.V.) showed in his lecture that structural change is not only a rural problem, but that large metropolises are also subject to it. Bioball promotes the material use of waste material flows in the Frankfurt/Rhein-Main region and has accompanied numerous exciting projects in this area that leverage untapped economic reserves.

 

At the end of the external perspectives, we went back to eastern Germany: Dr. Christine Rasche spoke in her dual function for Fraunhofer CBP and BioZ.  At the Leuna Industrial Park, Fraunhofer CBP has developed into a leading centre for biotechnological process research. BioZ connects partners to develop value chains based on bio-based raw materials and by-products.

 

After the lunch break, the six innovation areas in AUFBRUCH gave an update on the status of the research areas. Prof. Regina Palkovits (RWTH Aachen / FZ Jülich) not only coordinates the Graduate Cluster but also presented IB-1: Conversion of carbohydrate-rich residue streams into ethylene and propylene glycol. Afterwards, Prof. Petra Siegert (FH Aachen) showed how far IB-2 has come with the topic of “New recycling concepts for rubber”. Prof. Marco Oldiges (FZ Jülich, RWTH Aachen) spoke on behalf of IB-3 about the immobilisation of biocatalysts for modular production plants, before the more than 90 participants were able to network again during a coffee break.

 

This break was followed by the updates of the other innovation areas: IB-4, presented by Prof. Dörte Rother (FZ Jülich, RWTH Aachen University), deals with the chemo-enzymatic synthesis of bioplastics and chiral fine chemicals, IB-5 with the synthesis of novel carboxylic acid esters for the formulation of green plasticisers and lubricants, which Prof. Holger Beckmann from the Niederrhein University of Applied Sciences brought closer to the audience. The last innovation area was presented by Prof. Ulrich Schörken of the TH Köln, the topic here is the development of new biosurfactants.

 

In their concluding words, Dr. Tobias Klement (CLIB) and Prof. Regina Palkovits once again made it clear that it is anything but a matter of course how well AUFBRUCH works together across disciplines and departments. We are looking forward to the start of the second year of AUFBRUCH!