June 2025 - aerogel-it

Background

In 2024, the UNU Hub „Engineering to Face Climate Change“ had been founded at TUHH. The newly opened CampusLab will serve as an open platform to connect research, teaching, science communication and hands-on innovation. It aims to create excitement for STEM and circular innovation in partnership with NachwuchsCampus and Science made in Hamburg.

What the visitors saw

Several exhibits were shown to the visitors:

👉 TUHH showed exhibits such as oleogels for food applications (Lara Gibowsky), integration of coffee into a circular economy, sustainable lightweight mechanical parts and tailored endless fiber placement for composites.

👉 The traceless materials team showed their awesome plastic-free, injection-molded prototypes based on bio-based raw materials as alternatives to plastic.

👉 Lignopure team members Christin and Wienke exhibited their exciting lignin solutions such as LignoBase for Cosmetics but also lignin-containing foams and composites.

👉 Marc and Dirk presented #aerogel materials for various applications including shipping-ready pilot samples of cellulose aerogel and biomineral silica aerogel granules from the TUHH pilot plant.

Dirk Weinrich, Baldur Schroeter and Marc Fricke at the inauguration of the CampusLab "Circular Economy" at TUHH — Dirk Weinrich, Baldur Schroeter and Marc Fricke at the inauguration of the CampusLab “Circular Economy” at TUHH

aerogel-it pilot samples of cellulose and silica biomineral aerogel

aerogel-it at CampusLab Circular Economy

After his recent success with the bioaerogel, Alberto also single-handedly produced ~1000 liters of our next-generation silica aerogel at pilot scale on our plant at TUHH. This is a another major milestone for us.

We have concentrated all of our 15-20 years of aerogel experience and chemical expertise into the design of this material. Our next-generation silica aerogel is a hybrid material made of silica and biopolymers. We like to call it “biomineral” or “LSMA” – for now. There will be some re-branding in the future as we refine the material for various applications. Whatever its name – our customers and partners already really like it.

We see a number of important advantages:

1. If you have worked with current silica aerogels, you will know how dusty and brittle they are. This has always been a big problem for the applicators and integrators. We have tackled this: Our biomineral silica aerogel is not dusty, and it is mechanically stable. This makes it much easier to handle and work with.

2. Due to the improved mechanics, completely new types of aerogel composites can made out of our biomineral silica aerogel. This was difficult to impossible with current silica aerogels! Check out the photo.

3. Recycling and re-use become much more feasible, since the biomineral silica aerogel does not break down into dust quickly.

4. High cost is a problem of current aerogel materials and limits their acceptance. With our raw material choice together with our proprietary manufacturing process, we push for lower cost of aerogel materials. This is one of our core missions.

5. Current silica aerogels suffer from high CO2 footprints. Due to raw material choice and our proprietary manufacturing process, we expect a strongly reduced CO2 footprint for our biomineral silica aerogel. This will be especially important in the Construction industry with its ever stricter GWP targets. But of course improved sustainability is great in any application.

6. We can produce it with the same proprietary manufacturing process as our other aerogel materials – such as our bioaerogels. Multi-purpose production has been validated.

We are now going through the piloting phase and move towards showcases with our partners and customers. Really exciting times for the team!