Recently, the aerogel-it team concluded the BIOVIPWALL open call project within the iClimabuilt project, funded by EC Horizon Europe were they investigated ultra-thin prefab concrete sandwich elements with bioaerogel VIP insulation!

The background

Prefab sandwich wall elements are interesting for both new construction as well as for serial renovation of existing buildings as they can be mass-produced in factories. This enables leveraging standardization and automatization for higher efficiency compared to local construction on the construction site.

But currently, almost exclusively steel-reinforced concrete is used which requires minimum thickness to protect the steel reinforcement from corrosion over time. The additional concrete leads to additional CO2 emissions during production and transportation.

Plus, the thermal insulation and the concrete layers consume valuable space.

The potential solutions that were investigated

1️⃣ With carbon-reinforced concrete (carbon concrete), the reinforcement no longer needs to be protected against corrosion. Therefore, the concrete layer can be reduced in thickness which saves space, material and transport cost, reducing CO2 footprint and reducing CO2 emissions for transportation (Of course, the CO2 emissions for the carbon reinforcement need to be considered).

2️⃣ Vacuum insulation panels (VIPs) are the highest-performing thermal insulation materials consuming the least space. The CO2 footprint of current VIPs is not particularly attractive however. Hence our new bioaerogels were tested as VIP core materials within the project.

The outcome

✅ Together with our project partner va-Q-tec and the iClimabuilt service providers, we developed and tested a new ultra-thin prefab sandwich wall system combining carbon concrete and VIPs containing bio-based aerogel.

✅ The overall wall thickness of the non-load-bearing showcase sandwich elements could be reduced to as little as 11 cm while retaining thermal insulation performance with a U value of 0.2 W/(m2*K)!

✅ Keeping recycling and repair in mind, the system was furthermore designed to be easy to disassemble.

✅ Based on our own calculations, we expect that a substantial CO2 footprint reduction is possible.

✅ Furthermore, we gained lots of highly valuable test results and learnings for material and systems optimization as well for the scale-up of our bioaerogel materials!

The partners

HTWK Leipzig

Politecnico di Torino

INEGI driving science & innovation

Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU)

Technische Universität Dresden

Last week, the aerogel-it team came together in Hamburg to celebrate the company anniversary – already 4 years!

In addition to an excellent dinner at Küchenfreunde, Nikias Thörner of BYNIK organized a photoshooting with SOS and YAROSLAVA for us. It was high time to update those team photos, since we have gotten noticeably older since the last time those photos were taken.

It was very nice to have everyone together again, especially since it is not easy to get everyone together in one place what with all of the locations and commitments.

It was also a great opportunity for the team to take a moment and reflect on the great progress we have made in the last year.

Highlights of the last year


1️⃣ We are growing our aerogel distribution business. In general, are perceiving more interest from the market. And we are building new partnerships worldwide e.g. in the US, Middle East, SE Asia/Australia and China.

2️⃣ Completely new verticals and applications for aerogels have come up which we are now exploring. Thanks to our expertise and flexible aerogel material platform, we can quickly work towards new solutions.

3️⃣ Alberto, our “process magician”, has comissioned our pilot plant at Hamburg University of Technology. We have been able to produce hundreds of liters of our new aerogel materials. With this, we are validating both our next-generation product and process technology.

4️⃣ What is great: Our customers like our products and have purchased most of our pilot production. They have transitioned into their own pilot testing with success and are providing highly valuable learnings. The remaining pilot material has gone into various publicly funded projects such as the iclimabuilt project BIOVIPWALL.

5️⃣ Our biomineral silica aerogel is proving itself as next-generation version of classical silica aerogel with much-improved properties. It is suitable e.g. for aerogel render, aerogel coatings or aerogel cavity fill. But since it is robust, it also enables completely new aerogel-granule composites.

6️⃣ Our cellulose bioaerogel is showing great potential as bio-based and lightweight core material for vacuum-insulation panels e.g. for logistics solutions. We presented bioaerogel VIP prototypes at the BAU 2025 fair in Munich together with our partner va-Q-tec.

7️⃣ We have now filled a beautiful public project pipeline to work on exciting R&D topics over the next years with our partners. More details to follow.

8️⃣ We have condensed all of our technical and business learnings into an attractive investment offering. We will kick off scaling to production scale once all the pieces are securely in place.

aerogel-it celebrates 4 years! Thank you very much to the team and to all our partners and supporters! 🙏

aerogel-it celebrating 4 years at Küchenfreunde in Hamburg
aerogel-it celebrating 4 years at Küchenfreunde in Hamburg
The aerogel-it team celebrating 4 years
The aerogel-it team celebrating 4 years
The aerogel-it team 2025
The aerogel-it team 2025
Marc and Alberto celebrating 4 years
Marc and Alberto celebrating 4 years
Marc at the anniversary 2025 photoshoot
Marc at the anniversary 2025 photoshoot

If you are interested in aerogels, their applications, challenges and opportunities do check out a new technology briefing on aerogels by Springwise! It gives a great overview of the state of things.

You can find the briefing at Springwise here.

The article includes testimonials from fellow aerogel experts:
Fabian Eisenreich of Eindhoven University of Technology
Ernesto Scoppola of Max Planck Institute of Colloids and Interfaces
Sam Cryer of Thermulon

The Springwise team also interviewed Marc. He shared our aerogel-it vision of the aerogel world:


👉 With new exciting material and process technology, we can bring aerogel cost down. In the market, cost is a big obstacle for current aerogel materials. aerogel-it is developing next-generation aerogel materials to address this challenge.


👉 Also, with these new technologies aerogels become much more sustainable and easier to integrate and recycle.

👉 Bio-based aerogels such as our cellulose bioaerogel enable new applications and markets that were not possible with classical silica aerogel materials.

Biomineral silica aerogel LSMA-GH
Our next-generation biomineral silica aerogel particles

Last week Marc and Dirk of the aerogel-it team had the pleasure to visit leading Chinese aerogel and thermal barrier manufacturer IBIH Advanced Materials. IBIH celebrated their their 10th anniversary and hosted the official opening of a brand-new joint international aerogel R&D center.

Also present were Hamburg University of Technology president Prof. Dr. Andreas Timm-Giel and vice-president Prof. Dr. Irina Smirnova. Both were visiting China to build new collaborations. They were joined by fellow aerogel compatriots Keey Aerogel with Francisco RUIZ, new CEO Stéphane Reyniers and his predecessor Michael O’Connor.

The IBIH story

Starting from zero, the IBIH team around CEO Dr. Yunhong Wang has established itself as the leading provider of aerogel thermal barriers for EV batteries. Through hard work and grit, they have become market leader in China. Founder and chairman Mr. Tian emotionally spoke about how hard the journey had been – which resonated with the aerogel-it and Keey Aerogel teams.

In addition to the very touching anniversary celebration, the colleagues of IBIH very kindly and proudly gave their guests tours of their various R&D and production facilities. A pleasure for the assembled aerogel experts who were impressed by the capabilities. Furthermore, aerogel-it and IBIH identified potential collaborations. And in addition to the many business-related events, the IBIH organizing team around Haibing Dong, Yitian Du杜倚天 and Meng Xiao hosted the visitors for an amazing week in Beijing and surroundings!

Thermal barriers and aerogels

Thermal barriers are – as of now – necessary to contain possible thermal runaway from EV battery cells. In this way, they prevent chain reactions across the battery and help to protect passengers of electrical vehicles. Aerogel has been found to provide an excellent solution for two reasons:

1️⃣ Due to its excellent thermal insulation performance, the material shields against thermal runaway even if very thin which saves space and increases vehicle range.

2️⃣  The aerogel structure can deal with battery cell “breathing” and expansion over the battery lifetime.

There was some hope for solid-state batteries to get rid of the runaway problem and with it the thermal barriers. But the involved high energy densities still bear risk. Therefore, aerogels may be here to stay.

Heat shields have already become the largest aerogel application. The aerogel market is now heavily contested between older players such as Aspen Aerogels and Cabot and younger players, especially in Asia and China. Interestingly, there is currently no aerogel production in Europe (something that aerogel-it and Keey are driving to change with our step-change and cost-saving technologies).

Already around 5 million electrical cars drive with 200 million aerogel thermal barriers produced by IBIH. Now they are expanding globally and hired a stellar set of people to do it. Quite a success story that we can only congratulate them on!

Dr. Yunhong Wang (IBIH) and Marc Fricke (aerogel-it)
Dr. Yunhong Wang (IBIH) and Marc Fricke (aerogel-it)
IBIH conference and joint R&D center opening
IBIH conference and joint R&D center opening
Marc Fricke at IBIH conference
Marc Fricke at IBIH conference
Marc Fricke and Dirk Weinrich at new joint R&D center
Marc Fricke and Dirk Weinrich at new joint R&D center
IBIH anniversary celebration
IBIH anniversary celebration

Last week, Marc and Dirk represented aerogel-it at a very special occasion: The inauguration of the new “CampusLab Circular Economy” at Hamburg University of Technology. This event formed part of the 1st Annual United Nation University Hubs Meeting. The inauguration was headed by TUHH president Prof. Dr. Andreas Timm-Giel and Vice President Prof. Dr. Irina Smirnova.

CampusLab project manager Dr. Baldur Schroeter did an excellent job in setting up the lab as well as preparing and executing the inauguration ceremony (despite the many challenges).

aerogel-it was thrilled to be part of the inauguration of the CampusLab Circular Economy at TUHH. The team is very happy and honored to be a part of this great story at TUHH!

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.

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!

Last week, the aerogel-it team could celebrate reaching several milestones: Alberto has single-handedly achieved production of 1000 liters of cellulose aerogel beads at pilot scale using our pilot plant at Hamburg University of Technology!

Why is this important to us?

1️⃣ It is likely the largest quantity of bioaerogel ever produced. Alberto may very well have achieved a world record – especially since he did it completely on his own!

2️⃣ Much of the cellulose bioaerogel is required for our BIOVIPWALL project as part of the iclimabuilt (an EC Horizon Europe project). It will be converted to bioaerogel vacuum insulation panels (VIPs) by our partner va-Q-tec. Some bioaerogel VIPs will undergo testing by the project partners, and most will be integrated into carbon-reinforced sandwich elements. With this, we want to demonstrate one of the slimmest wall designs possible while using bio-based superinsulation!

3️⃣ The cellulose bioaerogel is also relevant for bioaerogel VIPs in new, more lightweight logistics solutions as well as greener cooling appliances (replacing for example fumed silica).

4️⃣ Based on the learnings he made, Alberto could validate and further improve his process concepts and equipment designs. This is highly important for scaling to our first large production plant. What is most amazing: Almost all of his designs work exactly as he planned.

It seems hard to believe that a year ago we could only produce a couple of liters at a time in the lab. Now we have reached a whole different level and have produced cellulose aerogel at pilot scale. We will be able to serve our customers with much needed pilot-scale quantities for their testing and showcases.

Cellulose aerogel produced at pilot scale
Cellulose aerogel produced at pilot scale

Recently, Marc presented our aerogel-it activities and products at the meeting for CO2-optimized construction for roads and paved surfaces (CO2-optimiertes Bauen von Verkehrsflächen & Straßen). The meeting took place at the DBU Deutsche Bundesstiftung Umwelt Umwelt in Osnabrück.

Michael Hafemann and Mark Gieseke of Gieseke Gruppe expertly moderated the event after Prof. Markus Große-Ophoff of DBU, Mark Gieseke and Prof. Dr. Prof. Dr. Heiko Meinen of Hochschule Osnabrück had kicked it off. The speakers highlighted roads and paved surfaces as very important but often overlooked lever for CO2 savings. Next to buildings they make up a large share of the built environment and cause corresponding CO2 emissions during construction and repair.

There were excellent presentations on decarbonization e.g. of bitumen and concrete by B2SQUARE and CarStorCon® Technologies. Stephan Harnischfeger of MHI Baustoff GmbH explained the challenges around asphalt emissions and low-temperature asphalt products as important solutions. ecopals, ecoLocked, HeideHanf and Bundesanstalt für Materialforschung und -prüfung also gave presentations. Furthermore, there were keynotes by Dr. Martins Zaumanis of EMPA and Prof. Dr. Hans-Hermann Weßelborg of FH Münster.

Aerogels also play a role for CO2-optimized construction in this field and are already being investigated for more thermal-resistant roads and paved surfaces. One example are our US colleagues from aerogel Coating Technologies (aCT Inc.).

Great discussions in the networking sessions rounded off the event. As former DBU Green Startup, we were certainly happy and thankful to have this opportunity to be back at DBU. Thank you very much to the organizers for inviting us.

Discussion round at CO2-optimiertes Bauen von Verkehrsflächen & Straßen

We are very happy to share that the aerogel-it team has grown: As of January 2025, Eduard Siemens joined our team as new team member and Sales Director.

In addition to being a Sales expert, Eduard is an experienced founder himself. He built a highly successful 3D-printing company, EWOQE, from scratch. With his business running stably, he was looking for new challenges to pursue and found our work and mission. He was intrigued by our aerogel materials and potential they offer. Because of that, he contacted us to see if we could work together – which we immediately accepted.

It goes without saying that his founders experience and Sales skills are invaluable to us. In his first two months, Eduard has already managed to open up lots of exciting opportunities. We are honored to have him on the team!

The aerogel-it team is very happy to be part of the BIOVIPWALL open call project funded by iClimabuilt, an EC Horizon Europe project.

Prefab sandwich wall elements are interesting for both new construction as well as for serial renovation of existing buildings as they can be mass-produced in factories. This enables leveraging standardization and automatization for higher efficiency compared to local construction on the construction site.

But currently, almost exclusively steel-reinforced concrete is used which requires minimum thickness to protect the steel reinforcement from corrosion and structural failure over time. The additional concrete for protection of the steel reinforcement leads to additional CO2 emissions during production and transportation.

When using carbon-reinforced concrete (carbon concrete) instead of conventional steel-reinforced concrete, the carbon reinforcement no longer needs to be protected against corrosion. Therefore, the concrete layer can be reduced in thickness which saves material and transport cost, reducing CO2 footprint and reducing CO2 emissions for transportation. Thinner carbon concrete elements also save valuable space in buildings.

Then thermal insulation is required for the envelope, and vacuum insulation panels (VIPs) are the highest-performing thermal insulation materials. When combined with VIPs, carbon concrete wall construction gives access to slimmest wall designs: The overall wall thickness can be reduced from ca. 40 cm to ca. 20 cm or less – or by 50% or more!

Within the BIOVIPWALL project, together with our partner va-Q-tec and the iClimabuilt service providers we will develop and test a new prefab sandwich wall system based on carbon concrete in combination with bioaerogel VIPs such as our cellulose bioaerogel. We will prepare various materials and sandwich elements for test campaigns by iClimabuilt members as well as for demonstration purposes including integration and monitoring in a building. Based on our own calculations, we expect that a substantial CO2 footprint reduction is possible. Stay tuned!

EC Horizon Europe