Cellulose aerogel produced at pilot scale!

Last week, the aerogel-it team could celebrate reaching several milestones. Alberto has single-handedly achieved production of 1000 liters of cellulose bioaerogel beads 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. We will be able to serve our customers with much needed pilot-scale quantities for their testing and showcases.

Alberto Bueno in front of the produced cellulose bioaerogel.

Meeting for CO2-optimized Construction for Roads and Paved Surfaces at DBU

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

New team member Eduard Siemens

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

In addition to being a Sales expert, Eduard is an experienced founder himself and 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 and 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!

aerogel-it participates in BIOVIPWALL project

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

New brand and mission statement – new website coming

Aerogel the World!

After three intense years of research, innovation, and passion, we are ready for an important step – a new brand and mission statement!

When we founded aerogel-it in 2021, we knew the road ahead would not be easy. Building a deep-tech company with high capital requirements is a challenge. But we were convinced: Aerogel has much wider scope than previously thought. And we were right.

We have not just improved existing aerogel materials with their various drawbacks. We have also created the first bio-based aerogels for applications that were previously unimaginable. Aerogels can be everywhere.

At the same time, we completely reimagined aerogel production. Our goal: to develop the best manufacturing technology — sustainable, efficient, and affordable. In our pilot plant, this vision has become reality.

And this is just the beginning on our journey. We felt this was the right moment to redefine our brand but also to sharpen our mission. In a nutshell, we want to leverage our leading aerogel expertise to provide new solutions for global problems, foremost the climate change and decarbonization – and we are in it for the long run. A huge thank you to our partner Nikias Thörner from BYNIK, who has taken our brand communication to the next level.

Our mission: “Global, active climate protection for everyone, every day.”

And the best part? Our new website will be live in just a few days! Stay tuned— we are excited to have you on this journey with us.

Our new aerogel-it logo

Tech-Tour Bio-Based Industries Award

We are honored and grateful to be among the 8 winners of the Tech Tour Bio-Based Industries 2024 Award!

The team is very happy that all of the hard work that we are putting into bio-based supermaterials such as our aerogel superinsulation for maximum energy and space savings is being recognized.

The Tech Tour programme brought together over 30 groundbreaking companies, top investors and industry experts on 14.11.24 in Wuppertal. Marc was on site to present our activities – despite recovering from a nasty cold. The event focused on innovation in sustainability, circular materials and green technology.

We would also like to congratulate the other winners:
Arda Biomaterials – circular biomaterials e.g. novel leather-like materials
Blue Ocean Closures – cellulose-based caps and lids
Mevaldi – green chemicals such as bio-based 3MPD
Origin by Ocean – algae and seaweed biorefinery
Quorium – new sustainable leather materials
Relement – green aromatic chemicals
SenseUP Biotechnology – eco-friendly pesticides based on dsRNA

Thank you very much to Tech Tour and the co-organizers Bio-based Industries Consortium (BIC), the hosts Circular Valley and the partners Bayer | Crop Science, Ministerium für Wirtschaft, Industrie, Klimaschutz und Energie des Landes NRW, Zaz Ventures and ShapingBio.

Photos TechTour

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Winners of the TechTour Bio-based Industries 2024 Award.

Visit from Beerenberg Advanced Solutions team

Last week the aerogel-it team was thrilled to receive Toni Suomäki, Geir Harris and their colleagues of the new Beerenberg Advanced Solutions team at Hamburg University of Technology. Beerenberg has recently bundled innovative products and solutions such as robotics and aerogels in this global business unit to maximize synergies and push innovative topics.

To kick it off, the team took the Beerenberg colleagues on a deep dive into aerogel technology and highlighted the improvements that the aerogel-it team has achieved over the last years regarding aerogel product and process technology: The team developed completely new aerogel products that address current shortcomings of aerogels but also open up new areas of application. And with the new step-change production tech, much higher efficiency and lower cost are achieved. Over the following days, the team then discussed deeper collaboration regarding the Oryza silica aerogel blanket technology as well as the aerogel-it aerogel particle technology.

Both companies see enormous potential in aerogel materials and the solutions they can provide across a wide range of industries and applications. To name one example: The Oryza silica aerogel products offer excellent, space- and energy-saving performance while achieving highest Fire Class A1 – as certified by a German ETA for the Construction industry. We see this as an important contribution to the much-needed energetic renovation of the European building stock.

The Beerenberg visit was rounded off with a tour of the pilot plant where Alberto demonstrated the worldwide largest quantity of our new biomineral aerogel particles! With this silica/biopolymer hybrid material, we are reinventing silica aerogel technology: excellent aerogel performance with highly improved handling, a great sustainability footprint and what is best – at competitive cost. We are looking forward to sharing more details soon – stay tuned!

Beerenberg and aerogel-it teams at TUHH. Raman Subrahmanyam/aerogel-it.

New products Oryza BGT LL and X

We are proud to announce the launch of new products Oryza BGT LL and Oryza BGT X!

Both are silica aerogel blanket materials that complement our existing Oryza BGT in the direction of even higher thermal insulation performance for especially demanding applications. This could be e.g. extremely limited space or higher energy saving targets.

Oryza BGT LL achieves a thermal conductivity of 16-17 mW/(m*K) while Oryza BGT X offers an amazing 14-15 mW/(m*K).

Both materials achieve the highest Fire Class A1 according to EN 13501-1.

We believe that with this expanded product portfolio we can now help our partners and customers to find the best-matching solution for their specific needs.

Our new Oryza BGT silica aerogel blanket grades Oryza BGT LL and Oryza BGT X with improved thermal insulation performance.

Award at Vonovia Construction Contest

We are happy to announce that aerogel-it received a special mention award for particularly innovative solutions as part of the Vonovia Construction Contest!

We are extremely grateful and honored to have been considered next to the winners Kimm GmbH & Co. KG and STRAMENTEC GmbH as well the other special mention award to Bton Group. Thank you very much to the Vonovia team and congratulations to everyone!

Vonovia is a huge player in the European real estate market and owns more than 540.000 apartments. The Vonovia team was particularly impressed by the options our new aerogel materials offer regarding energetic renovation of the existing building stock – a challenge they are facing.

And energetic renovation is urgently needed. Around 40% of EU energy is used for buildings, but 75% of the buildings in the EU have poor energy performance (see here). Energetically more efficient buildings require less energy to heat and cool, which reduces CO2 emissions and helps to reduce the size and cost of heating and cooling equipment such as heat pumps. Less energy used means less energy that needs to be provided in the first place.

Aerogels are attractive as space-saving option especially for interior insulation where the available space is highly limited. However, current aerogel materials are costly and have high CO2 footprints. aerogel-it is developing aerogel materials and aerogel production technology to lower cost and CO2 footprint such as our aerogels from the wood side-stream lignin or from cellulose. We also market SLENTITE, still the best-performing interior insulation board available.

And we do not stop there. Together with our partners, we are working on ready-to-use solutions based on our new aerogel materials to tackle the challenges the Construction industry faces.

Photos: Vonovia, Dirk Weinrich

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7th International Seminar on Aerogels

📣 The aerogel-it team is attending next week’s International Seminar on Aerogels from September 18th to 20th at Hamburg University of Technology.

This bi-annual conference has developed into one of the most important meetings for our global community of aerogel researchers and also many companies. We are expecting attendants from all over the world. For example, during the last conference in 2022, colleagues from NASA gave a great talk on aerogels for space applications.

It is also lots of fun. Since the community is not big, it is really like a family meeting. Everyone is happy to get together again and share the latest in aerogel developments and also aerogel-related gossip.

Alberto and Dirk will be giving a short talk on September 19th. This year, we will focus on our recent ramp-up with the bioaerogel pilot plant at TUHH. Alberto is a true process development genius and has already converted the learnings from the last ~6 months operation to new technological advances that will be hugely important for our further production scaling. As a visual goodie, we will be showing the worldwide largest quantities (as far as we know) of lignin and cellulose bioaerogel particles.

aerogel-it will attend the 7th International Seminar on Aerogels.