AEROLIGNOCEL Project and M6 Meeting

In April 2025, the aerogel-it team started the public funded project AEROLIGNOCEL together with our partners Hamburg University of Technology (TUHH), Kahnt & Tietze GmbH and va-Q-tec Thermal Solutions GmbH. AEROLIGNOCEL is funded by the Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Energy.

Last week the partners came together TUHH to discuss results and further directions we want to explore. TUHH were great hosts of an excellent and productive meeting – thank you! 🙏

Project Background

The aerogel-it team sees great opportunities for bioaerogel materials such as our cellulose bioaerogel. However, we currently rely on commercially available raw materials which in some cases have undergone unnecessary processing and do not match our requirements well. This causes increased cost and environmental burdens. As alternative, there are lots of interesting side streams that are relevant e.g. from agriculture or the food industry, with biorefineries as important cornerstone.

What will be worked on

aerogel-it and TUHH will investigate various bio-based raw material sources and side streams. From these, we will develop new aerogel materials for Construction and vacuum-insulation applications e.g. in thermally-controlled logistics. Kahnt & Tietze and va-Q-tec will integrate and test these new aerogel materials at lab and pilot scale. An important aspect is scalability of the new aerogel materials to get to commercially relevant solutions.

The benefits

We expect new new aerogel material classes and technical solutions, improved sustainability footprints and lower cost. Furthermore, we expect to identify new raw material sources including side streams. Finally, there will be important learnings on scaling up of these bioaerogel materials and on how they are integrated best into the applications.

The project will run until March 2028. Stay tuned!

Marc Fricke, Alberto Bueno Morales, Eduard SIEMENS, Alexander Kahnt, Nicola Brzoska-Steinhaus, Baldur Schroeter, Irina Smirnova, Michel Groth