Plant residues are ideal raw materials for biobased alternatives to products of the petroleum industry: They do not compete with the cultivation of food and animal feed and promise additional added value to the plant products already produced. In practice, there is often a difficulty: the microorganisms used in biotechnology usually cope with only one of the two varieties of sugars, which are found in vegetable residues.
The outdoor outfitter Vaude and the manufacturer of thermoplastic elastomers and flexible polymer compounds Hexpol TPE have taken another small step towards a biobased circular economy: They present a drinking valve made of bioplast
Whether in urban parks or in the private garden: huge amounts of green waste are produced every year when mowing the lawn. Until now, the freshly mowed grass either ends up in the compost or is disposed of at high cost. Under the title "GreenToGreen", a research consortium now wants to establish grass as a raw material source. The project will be funded by the Federal Ministry of Education and Research over the next three years with 280,000 euros as part of the "BioBall" measure.
The day on which Germany has consumed its share of the world's available resources has been advancing for years. While the Earth Overshoot Day in 2000 was still on 23 September, this year Germany is already living on credit from 3 May. The day is calculated annually by the Global Footprint Network and illustrates the share of countries in global resources. This year, the cutoff date is, of course, only a forecast and is based on the previous year. Due to the corona pandemic, there is currently a lack of data for a reliable calculation.
Plants need water to grow. The supply of liquid is provided by the roots. How much water is absorbed is determined by a hydraulic system that works similar to machines. A negative pressure ensures that plants suck the water out of the soil. The suction power is based on the negative pressure in the plant supply channels, which is created by the evaporation of water on the cell walls of the leaves. But the pressure in this network is usually limited to minus 100 bar for plants. Until now it was unclear why this is so.
The Zuse-Gemeinschaft, an association of private sector research institutions, intends to focus more on applied bioeconomic research. To accomplish this, the industrial research community has now founded the Bioeconomy Cluster, which initially includes 15 of the 75 institutes.
What do Germans think about technology? This is what the TechnikRadar from acatech and the Körber Stiftung has been investigating since 2018. The third issue of the magazine focused on the bioeconomy for the first time.
Nature offers a wide range of active ingredients that play an increasingly important role in medicine, the pharmaceutical and food industries. Natural substances that are not very popular are gradually coming into the spotlight. Ferulic acid is one of these candidates. It is contained in many plants such as rice, dill or roseroot and has health promoting ingredients as well as flavours which are relevant for the production of aromas such as vanillin and the typical wheat beer taste.
Every year the chemical industry produces around 100 million tonnes of methanol. However, the production of this important basic chemical is based on fossil raw materials and causes high CO2 emissions. The exact opposite would be conceivable: Methanol can also be produced from green hydrogen and carbon dioxide. But process requirements for producing green methanol on an industrial scale have been little researched to date. The project "Power-to-Methanol - Grünes Methanol", funded by the Federal Ministry of Economics, wants to change this.
"The decline of biodiversity and intact ecosystems in Germany is alarming." With these words, Federal Research Minister Anja Karliczek summed up a development that the Federal Ministry of Education and Research is counteracting with an initiative for the conservation of species diversity. On the occasion of the International Day of Biological Diversity, the ministry is now providing a further 25 million euros for research projects aimed at protecting biodiversity.