News Archives - Page 2 of 6

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.

Tech-Tour Bio-Based Industries Award

News

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

Winners of the TechTour Bio-based Industries 2024 Award.

Visit from Beerenberg Advanced Solutions team

News

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

News

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

News

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

7th International Seminar on Aerogels

News

📣 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.

aerogel-it bei STEP USA in NYC

News

This week Marc and Dirk participated in the STEP USA GreenTech Program hosted in New York by the German American Chamber of Commerce, Inc. (GACC-NY). We joined a great line-up of GreenTech companies with Lignopure , carbonauten GmbH, HighLine Technology GmbH, fior familie GmbH, Cleancopter, Apollo Green Solutions and keywood GmbH.

We were truly blown away by the quality and intensity of the program led by Victoria Kaeser of GACC-NY and Brian Frumberg of VentureOut and hosted at multiple breathtaking locations throughout Manhattan:

GACC-NY CEO Susanne Gellert and team supported by Brian provided valuable insights into cultural, organizational and legal aspects surrounding the expansion to the US and specifically New York.
Anne-Sophie Mahle of EDCNYC and Carin Rising of ESD shared current GreenTech programs and support mechanisms relevant to businesses wanting to come to NYC and NY. Numerous projects provide collaboration possibilities as well as opportunities for startups to highlight their technologies in pilots within NYC. Also, sustainability goals of NYC were discussed.
Jeannette Williams and Steph Jones of the NYU Urban Future Lab presented activities around climate tech such as the ACRE Incubator.
Christian Joerg and team highlighted opportunities offered by the German Accelerator.
The amazing Jennifer Louie of Closed Loop Partners discussed some of the inner workings of investing approaches and also how new investment vehicles are developed to address current shortcomings e.g. for capex-heavy projects.
IP attorney and business angel Ray Farrell took up the tough task of explaining critical points surrounding IP in general and in the US specifically – absolutely crucial and often underestimated.
Matt Lopez of Revenue Nomad / formerly Skaled shared some of his extensive expertise on structuring sales processes to maximize revenue generation – which sometimes does get overlooked amongst the day to day challenges of a startup.
Brian expertly coached the startups to crystallize our offerings into 2-minute pitches – which many of them would not have believed to be possible. This training culminated in a pitch event at the Goethe Institute, where the startups pitched to a panel of investor experts as well as a crowd of 100+ guests. Throughout the evening, there were lively discussions and many great connections were made – all in a vibrant atmosphere!
After sessions, the group also had the chance to bond over Mexican food and drinks at Mezcali restaurant. And not to forget the fun visit to Pete’s Tavern to celebrate the conclusion of the pitch night.

For Marc and Dirk, the STEP USA program truly opened up a whole new perspective. They highly appreciated learning about GACC-NY as a strong partner for future expansion into the US. aerogel-it is highly grateful to N-Bank for supporting us and to GACC-NY for giving us the chance to be part of this journey.

Battery Show 2024

News

Last week, Marc and Dirk visited The Battery Show Europe 2024 in sunny Stuttgart to check how aerogels as materials have fared in the electromobility industry and to also catch up with various contacts. The show was very crowded, and other than sausages and beer against cash – no cards accepted – at premium prices it was hard to get anything.

There were great discussions with Aspen Aerogels, Enersens, Tecman, Henkel, ISOVOLTA Group, Freudenberg Group, ALT Technologies and Culimeta, but also with former colleagues from BASF.

Compared to the previous years, the show had grown quite a bit but there was also a change of exhibitor line-up where some exhibitors from 2023 did not return to exhibit again.

Interestingly, aerogel was much more present in 2024 than it was in 2023 when it was still quite a secretive ingredient. Numerous cell-to-cell heat shields based on aerogel were exhibited this year.

In general, it was discussed that the battery safety regulations would now move towards full containment of thermal runaways as opposed to a 5 min time window. The discussion partners agreed that if valuable space needed to be conserved and the cell expansion accommodated at the same time, this would only be possible with aerogels.

It remains to be seen how the EV battery aerogel market will develop. China has seen an extreme increase in aerogel production capacity over the last years, and prices have fallen. Aspen Aerogels is dominating the US market and will continue to do so. Only in Europe there is no aerogel supplier as of now, even though there are various startups such as Keey Aerogel, Enersens and us from aerogel-it working on solutions. Cabot seems to have suspended production for the time being.

As aerogel-it, we are working on the most cost-effective production technology in combination with powerful aerogel formulations at lower cost that were previously not accessible. We are eager to see if we get to play our role in this challenging market!

Marc and Dirk at the Battery Show 2024 – having a much-needed break.

Worldwide biggest bioaerogel pilot plant inaugurated

News

We are very happy to share that the pilot plant our team built together with Hamburg University of Technology (TUHH) has now been officially inaugurated! See here for the press release (in German).

The inauguration ceremony with Marc and Prof. Dr. Irina Smirnova took place as part of a meeting of the Aerogel Cluster for Improved Energy Efficiency in Industrial Applications. This included participation of the Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Climate Action (BMWK) and the Projektträger Jülich.

The record-setting pilot plant is now the worldwide biggest facility for producing bioaerogels – including our 100% bio-based lignin aerogel as green space-saving superinsulation. It has a capacity of 150l of bioaerogel particles per day – this means an increase by a factor of ~100 from the previous lab scale! All of our new-developed aerogel materials can be produced on this true multi-purpose equipment. We can cover the full range of inorganic/biomineral to bio-based formulations as well as hybrids.

We could already validate completely new step-change and cost-saving process technology. One of our main objectives is to bring the cost of aerogels down decisively.

A big thank you to Alberto who literally built the plant almost single-handedly from process development, equipment design, mechanical building, electrical setup and programming! Dirk was excited to be part of the project and to bring his industrial aerogel production experience to the table.

We will share more details soon. Stay tuned!

Photo: TUHH

Inauguration of the pilot plant. From left too right: Marc Fricke, CEO aerogel-it, Prof. Irina Smirnova, Vice President Research of TUHH, Prof. Alexander Penn, Dean of Studies Process Technology, Dr. Pavel Gurikov and Alberto Bueno (aerogel-it und TUHH).

Lightweight building aesthetics and energy efficiency? No contradiction. The Triesch Residence as case study.

News

The climate change as well as surging energy prices create a pressing trend towards more energy efficiency in buildings to lower carbon dioxide emissions and energy consumption for heating and cooling. While essential from the sustainability point of view, the drive towards more energy efficiency has a well visible and undesirable impact on building aesthetics: Walls need to become increasingly thicker since layers of thermal insulation material such as mineral wool, expanded polystyrene or polyurethane foam need to keep up with the ever stricter energy-efficiency requirements. There is only so much performance available from these well-established thermal insulation materials.

This translates to ever thicker insulation layers and walls. However, as a downside, the resulting building designs become heavier in appearance. Windows become deeper and restrict the outside view. Altogether, an unpleasant, cumbersome aesthetic sensation is created.

Aerogels are a high-performance alternative to conventional thermal insulation. Currently, these materials are used where space matters most. Usually two aspects are relevant in construction:

Where existing buildings require energetic renovation to improve energy efficiency, often little space is available for thermal insulation e.g. on the inner side of exterior walls, in wall cavities or beneath floors. Strongly limited space benefits from the highest possible performance of aerogels – to maximize energy efficiency.
For new building projects, the higher performance of aerogels enables slimmer wall construction. This conserves valuable useable space in the building. While using aerogels seems expensive at first, the use of these high-performance products pays off in many cases. The additional space the slimmer wall design creates leads to additional revenue that can cover the cost of the aerogel materials and more, which makes the decision on using aerogel materials economically attractive to investors.

But a third aspect is often overlooked: Aerogels also enable new possibilities in terms of building aesthetics, since much more lightweight building designs become possible. Construction no longer needs to be heavyweight to be energy efficient.

The Triesch Residence (photo: Dirk Weinrich).

This has been impressively achieved with the Triesch Residence in Berlin. When furniture expert Lars Triesch decided to translate the beautiful building design of architect Ray Kappe from California to Berlin, he was confronted with a dilemma: For the original building in the United States with its breathtaking lightweight design based on redwood and concrete no thermal insulation had been used. The more extreme Berlin climate would not allow such an approach, less so since current energy efficiency standards were to be met within the project.

Happily, Triesch found a potential solution when learning about aerogel materials and the pioneering work of chemical company BASF in this space. He contacted Dr. Marc Fricke, now CEO of aerogel-it GmbH and at the time BASF business development manager for aerogel materials. Dr. Fricke was immediately convinced that aerogels were the key solution for the Triesch building design and brought architect and aerogel construction experts Dr. Alexander Kahnt and Matthias Tietze of Kahnt & Tietze GmbH into the project. Together, the team re-designed the original details of the Ray Kappe building. They incorporated aerogels into the building envelope to achieve the desired energy efficiency performance of the building while maintaining the original lightweight appearance of the Kappe design:

The redwood wall elements and pillars were re-designed as cassettes of a slim redwood envelope enclosing an aerogel-containing thermal-insulation layer.
The massive, steel-reinforced concrete elements were re-designed as slim carbon-reinforced, prefabricated concrete sandwich elements with a central aerogel-containing thermal-insulation layer.

Keeping the original slim construction was only possible due to the excellent performance of the space-saving aerogel materials. The result was extraordinary and the building iconic. Compared to conventional construction with standard thermal insulation, the wall thickness was reduced to around 20 cm with aerogel insulation as opposed to 30-40 cm. The slim walls had a huge impact on building aesthetics. The benefits became visible after successful completion of the construction project: The Kappe design retained its aesthetic appeal in the new building in Berlin.

Aerogel superinsulation is cut to the desired shape by the construction team on site (photo: HTWK Leipzig).

Aerogel superinsulation is applied to the wooden structure of the Triesch residence (photo: HTWK Leipzig).

Recently, the team had the chance to visit the Triesch Residence and experience the building in use. After three years, owner Lars Triesch was more than happy with the experience of living in the building and with the high level of energy efficiency that has been achieved. Despite the open and lightweight structure with its slim walls, the heating system was only rarely required by the family.

The aesthetics of the design and its potential for future projects impressed the aerogel experts of aerogel-it GmbH and Kahnt & Tietze GmbH. The two companies recently signed a memorandum of understanding on collaborating on the combination of prefabrication technology and slim aerogel insulation. The visit convinced all parties that this technology combination makes sense.