Synthesizing fine chemicals: Technological Advance in Production of Pharmaceuticals

04-Oct-2024 - Production of fine chemicals such as those used in pharmaceuticals is typically complex and laborious. An interdisciplinary team of Fraunhofer researchers worked together across different projects to devise a method modeled on a cascade, in which multiple successive stages of synthesis proceed ...

On the way to emission-free mining: extracting metals with microorganisms

Innovative process for the bioleaching of copper, indium and zinc developed

12-Jul-2024 - Microorganisms work in an underground bioreactor and convert ores or residual materials from mining into the valuable metals copper, indium and zinc. Innovative membrane filters then filter the valuable metals from the resulting process water. In a pilot plant of a current mining project near ...

Producing chemicals in an environmentally friendly and energy-saving way: More yield through nanopores

New membrane process increases the efficiency of enzymes - reaction rate significantly improved

22-Apr-2024 - Flow-through reactors packed with enzymes can produce certain chemicals in a gentle and careful way. However, their performance has so far been limited. A research team from the Helmholtz-Zentrum Hereon and RWTH Aachen University has now been able to increase the yield a thousandfold. Using a ...

Converting carbon dioxide into useful chemicals with the help of bacteria and solar power

How electrolysis and fermentation can be combined in one system

08-Apr-2024 - Researchers at BAM have developed a new technology that uses bacteria and solar power to produce useful chemicals from CO2. In the future, this could be used in industry to reduce greenhouse gas emissions instead of releasing them into the atmosphere. Reducing the greenhouse gas CO2 is crucial to ...

How can life emerge in a world of minerals?

The European Research Council (ERC) has awarded an ERC Synergy Grant to the project “The role of silica at the dawn of life on our planet” (PROTOS)

30-Oct-2023 - How did our planet become habitable? The first five hundred million years of planet Earth – the so-called Hadean – have been shrouded in mystery so far because there are no remains of rocks from those times. The discovery that the planet already had water then has opened up new perspectives on a ...

Modular flow cells for sustainable chemistry

Optimization of electrochemical manufacturing processes

05-Sep-2023 - Electrochemical processes like water electrolysis will become increasingly important in the future in light of climate change and the resultant need for an energy and raw materials transition. The Fraunhofer Institute for Microengineering and Microsystems IMM is collaborating with hte GmbH to ...

Light and milling balls for greener chemical processes

Reactions without solvents

16-Mar-2023 - A combination of photochemistry and mechanochemistry saves 98 per cent solvent and 80 per cent energy in a number of reactions. What’s more, the process takes less time than it does in solution. Light-driven chemical reactions so far were usually conducted with large amounts of solvents that are ...

From a greenhouse gas to an industrial raw material

06-Dec-2022 - Rather than being released into the atmosphere and exacerbating the problem of climate change, CO2 can also be used as a raw material for substances required in industrial processes, such as formic acid or methanol. The conversion of CO2 has already been investigated in detail in laboratory ...

Green adhesives made from whey

New process for obtaining valuable ethyl acetate

02-Sep-2022 - In collaboration with TU Dresden, Fraunhofer researchers have developed a process for obtaining valuable, high-purity ethyl acetate from whey. This can be used, for example, to produce environmentally friendly adhesives, thereby replacing conventional ethyl acetate extracted from fossil-based raw ...

Effective metal extraction with electron-stimulated microorganisms by bioleaching

14-Jul-2022 - As part of the project "BioIntElekt" (Development of an innovative small-scale, low-energy electron beam source integrated in a bioreactor system, funding reference: 601015) funded by the Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft in an internal program, metals should be mobilized with the help of bacteria. At the ...