This week the aerogel-it team had the pleasure and honor of meeting IBIH CEO Dr. Yunhong Wang and Prof. Dr. Andreas Timm-Giel, president of Hamburg University of Technology, together with our longstanding collaboration partner Prof. Dr. Irina Smirnova, head of the Institute of Thermal Separation Processes at TUHH, to discuss aerogel-it and IBIH aerogel products, developments and perspectives. Specifically the electrical vehicle (EV) market was a topic.
Dr. Wang is a key member of the global aerogel industry as well as a seasoned chemical engineering expert. He spent ~20 years of his life in Europe e.g. working for Lonza before founding IBIH in China around 5 years ago. Since then IBIH has strongly grown to become one of the largest aerogel suppliers in China as well as the largest supplier of aerogel heat shields for EVs with well-known, heavyweight customers such as CATL and BYD. Fun fact: The majority of EVs in China (which are a lot) drive with aerogel heat shields produced by IBIH!
The EV market is now seen as the largest future market for aerogels (see IDTechEx article here and market study here). However, it seems that the global aerogel industry is simply not growing fast enough to meet the enormous growth predicted for the EV industry, and it is expected that aerogels will still be required for a while in EV batteries despite developments such as solid-state or LFP chemistry. Energy densities and safety requirements will keep increasing, and space-saving aerogel heat shields have already demonstrated their safety performance in real life – there was not a single fire with the EVs containing IBIH aerogel heat shields.
But importantly, IBIH alone will not be able to cover this growing gap, and especially in Europe there is a serious lack of aerogel production capacities. IBIH is pushing for a collaboration of the global aerogel industry to address this growing need. aerogel-it and TUHH are joining forces with IBIH and others to meet this challenge.
