This week Marc and Dirk participated in the finals of the Innovationspreis Niedersachsen 2023 as representatives of the aerogel-it team. The jury nominated aerogel-it for the category Vision with its 100% bio-based lignin aerogel for energy efficiency and decarbonization.

Nele Bracht and Hannes Putfarken and their colleagues of the Innovationsnetzwerk Niedersachsen excellently organized the event in the Niedersächsisches Landesmuseum Hannover. The Minister of Economy, Traffic, Construction and Digital of Lower Saxony Olaf Lies, the Minister of Science and Culture of Lower Saxony Falko Mohrs, president of the Leuphana University Lüneburg Prof. Dr. Sascha Spoun and CEO of the Innovationszentrum Niedersachsen Dr. Thomas Schulmeyer gave speeches.

It was an excellent event with nine truly interesting contributions from industry and academia. It had been noticeably hard for the jury to select the winners. aerogel-it did not win the first prize. Nevertheless, the team felt honored to be among the selected few nominated companies and individuals!

Nicely, our adopted home city Osnabrück showed a strong presence with one nomination and one win: Congratulations to the team of Altosens GmbH who presented their innovative pressure sensing technology! The teams were happy to be supported on site by Thomas Serries of the WIGOS Wirtschaftsförderungsgesellschaft Osnabrücker Land mbH, Thomas Büdden of the ICO InnovationsCentrum Osnabrück and Ingmar Bojes of the WFO Wirtschaftsförderung Osnabrück GmbH.

After the award ceremony, the organizers rounded off the event with a reception in the museum patio for

celebration and networking.

We are honored and very happy to share with you that as of September 2023 aerogel-it will exclusively distribute the following products of our Norwegian partner Beerenberg:

  • The silica aerogel blanket Oryza BGT for the Construction market for the DACH region (Germany, Austria, Switzerland).

  • An EV battery aerogel heat shield solution for Europe.

We feel that the Oryza BGT aerogel blanket is a game-changer especially for two reasons:

  • It has the highest fire class A1 for maximum fire resistance in any application.

  • Its advanced dust-control technology makes the blankets very easy to handle and integrate (a whole different game compared to similar products).

It has been truly a pleasure to work with the Beerenberg colleagues and to set up this relationship. First volumes have already been sold, and we have set up a distribution hub in Germany.

Together with our partners Kahnt & Tietze we are in the process of getting the European Technical Assessment (ETA) for Oryza BGT so that our customers can use the material freely in their Construction projects.

We have also submitted first samples of the EV heat shield product for testing to European Automotive customers and are waiting for their feedback. The product has scored highly in Asia and European solutions are sorely needed.

More info on the partnership can be found in the Beerenberg press release.

Beerenberg enters distribution agreement with aerogel-it.

This week the aerogel-it team had the pleasure and honor of meeting IBIH CEO Dr. Yunhong Wang and Prof. Dr. Andreas Timm-Giel, president of Hamburg University of Technology, together with our longstanding collaboration partner Prof. Dr. Irina Smirnova, head of the Institute of Thermal Separation Processes at TUHH, to discuss aerogel-it and IBIH aerogel products, developments and perspectives. Specifically the electrical vehicle (EV) market was a topic.

Dr. Wang is a key member of the global aerogel industry as well as a seasoned chemical engineering expert. He spent ~20 years of his life in Europe e.g. working for Lonza before founding IBIH in China around 5 years ago. Since then IBIH has strongly grown to become one of the largest aerogel suppliers in China as well as the largest supplier of aerogel heat shields for EVs with well-known, heavyweight customers such as CATL and BYD. Fun fact: The majority of EVs in China (which are a lot) drive with aerogel heat shields produced by IBIH!

The EV market is now seen as the largest future market for aerogels (see IDTechEx article here and market study here). However, it seems that the global aerogel industry is simply not growing fast enough to meet the enormous growth predicted for the EV industry, and it is expected that aerogels will still be required for a while in EV batteries despite developments such as solid-state or LFP chemistry. Energy densities and safety requirements will keep increasing, and space-saving aerogel heat shields have already demonstrated their safety performance in real life – there was not a single fire with the EVs containing IBIH aerogel heat shields.

But importantly, IBIH alone will not be able to cover this growing gap, and especially in Europe there is a serious lack of aerogel production capacities. IBIH is pushing for a collaboration of the global aerogel industry to address this growing need. aerogel-it and TUHH are joining forces with IBIH and others to meet this challenge.

Prof. Dr. A. Timm-Giel (TUHH president), Dr. Yunhong Wang (CEO of IBIH) and colleagues, Prof. Dr. I. Smirnova, aerogel-it team.

As aerogel-it we pursue and drive the decarbonization of multiple industries. Apart from the use of non-fossile raw materials for our products such as lignin, this includes energyefficiency across our whole value chain.

One important manufacturing step of aerogels is the so-called supercritical drying where supercritical CO2 at high pressure and temperature is used as extraction liquid to very mildly remove solvent from a gel precursor. In the supercritical state, CO2 looks and behaves similar to a liquid (check out the comments for more details if you are curious). Why is this necessary? Because using a conventional solvent and drying method would destroy the material and its fine pores – they would simply collapse due to huge capillary forces. Supercritical drying gives access to the super-fine pores of aerogels with less than 100 nm diameter (around 1000x less than a human hair!). These pores give aerogels their amazing performance.

Energy efficiency is important here: Getting CO2 to the supercritical state requires a lot of energy for compression and heating, which forms a large part of the total energy consumption of our process. The aerogel-it team has years of experience with industrial aerogel manufacturing and its challenges, and we have the clear goal to save energy wherever possible. We will establish the most energy-efficient aerogel manufacturing processes in our future plants!

An important milestone has now been reached: Our process expert Alberto recently completed a fully virtual thermodynamic simulator of this supercritical drying step which now enables us to run the process digitally. By optimizing the process with this digital twin, Alberto could reduce the energy consumption by more than 95%!

And it does not stop with the optimization at the planning stage. Once our production plant is running, the process control systems will feed into this digital twin to optimize manufacturing via machine learning in real-time!

Alberto working on the digital model for optimization of our aerogel production process.

This week Mercer International celebrated the inauguration of the first lignin plant in Germany as well as the only operating lignin plant in Europe at their Rosenthal site. The opening ceremony was led by the prime minister of Thuringia, Bodo Ramelow, and the CEO and President of Mercer International Juan C. Bueno and excellently moderated by site manager Dr. Christian Soergel. Mercer will now operate the plant as part of their strategy towards using lignin as valuable bio-based precursor for multiple applications – beyond its current role for bioelectricity generation. It could very well turn out to be a historical moment.

Marc and Dirk were thrilled and honored to be invited to this important event as representatives of aerogel-it. The head of the new lignin center Dr. Lars Gabriel gave a tour of the lignin plant and explained the production process as well as the possible applications of lignin. As one example, Marc could show our 100% bio-based lignin aerogel as green superinsulation material for energy efficiency and decarbonization / defossilization to the participants and Ministerpräsident Ramelow. Afterwards, the Mercer team took the visitors on tours of the site, and the event was rounded off very well with an excellent barbecue and lunch for both the visitors and the site personnel.

And that was not all. On the preceding evening, Mercer hosted a dinner at in neighboring Bad Steben with participants from politics, academia, research institutions, finance institutions and industry, which Marc and Dirk were also kindly invited to. In several impulse talks Nicolas Hark of the nova-Institut GmbH, Prof. Dr. Michael Stelter of Fraunhofer IKTS, Prof. Dr. Peter Seeberger of the Max-Planck-Institut für Kolloid- und Grenzflächenforschung and Bernt Farcke of the Federal Ministry of Food and Agriculture underlined the urgency to act in face of the climate change but also highlighted the potential of bio-based raw materials as well as the complexities surrounding regulatory definition of terms such as decarbonization, defossilization, bioenergy with potentially drastic effects on the market. Truly challenging waters to navigate for all stakeholders in the years to come. Over dinner, the highly interesting and lively discussion continued until late at night.

A truly amazing event with perfect organization. A big thank you to the team of Mercer International!

Tolle Neuigkeiten! aerogel-it ist für das Finale des Innovationspreises Niedersachsen 2023 nominiert !

Das Team ist sehr stolz über diese Anerkennung unserer Arbeit im Bereich biobasierter Aerogele wie z.B. unser 100% biobasiertes Ligninaerogel als Hochleistungswärmedämmung für Dekarbonisierung und Energieeffizienz in verschiedensten Industrien und Anwendungen.

Wir glauben fest daran, dass Aerogele und insbesondere Bioaerogele als hochinnovative Materialien einen wichtigen Beitrag leisten können und müssen.

Marc und Dirk freuen sich auf die Preisverleihung in Hannover am 18.09.23.

Wir freuen uns sehr, dass TI – Technische Isolierung einen Artikel von Marc und Dirk veröffentlicht hat, in dem unsere Geschichte und auch die aktuellen Produkte und Entwicklungen aus dem Bereich Aerogele vorgestellt werden!

Der Artikel gibt eine gute Gesamtübersicht über die verschiedenen Themen, die das Team zur Zeit verfolgt. Neben den Neuentwicklungen im Bereich biobasierte Aerogele wie das Ligninaerogel werden dort unsere bereits verfügbaren Produkte wie das Polyurethanaerogel SLENTITE® genauer beschrieben.

In June the aerogel-it team came together in Hamburg to celebrate 2 years since the founding of the company in 2021. Due to different working locations and full schedules it has not been easy to organize physical meetings involving everyone – and the team enjoyed the get-together a lot!

A good opportunity to recap since a lot has been achieved by the team and our partners over that time:

1. We continue to feel that aerogels will play in important role in the future. The megatrends such energy efficiency and decarbonization/ defossilization we saw back in 2021 are steadily moving the markets in our direction.

2. We are actively working on all verticals foreseen in 2021 with our global partner network. We have established the required market access. We are on an excellent path towards becoming a leading aerogel manufacturer and solutions provider.

3. Market feedback on our aerogel products, especially the 100% bio-based lignin aerogel has been overwhelming from all angles – the press, potential customers and potential partners. It shows us that we are on the right track with our aerogel solutions for decarbonization and energyefficiency.

4. We signed multiple MoUs and first supply agreements with our customers and partners and more are in preparation. Unfortunately we have not been able to communicate all of them but that will change. Our world-class legal team is doing an excellent job that we are very thankful for.

5. Sales are picking up and help us to finance our activities. In parallel, attracting investment for our first plant has not been easy. But it has been an exciting learning curve and we are glad that we did not commit too early. We can pursue our strategy unimpeded while going for the best matches.

6. We are super happy about receiving first funding from the DBU (Deutsche Bundesstiftung Umwelt) for our green aerogel work. More public funding is upcoming 2024+.

7. After 1500+ hours of work between us and our partners, the basic engineering of our first multi-purpose aerogel production plant is almost complete. We created a robust concept based on next-generation technology and digital optimization. We are already working on further step-change technology for follow-up plants to make aerogels even more affordable.

8. The collaboration with Prof. Irina Smirnova and her Hamburg University of Technology group has been great (as in the previous 10+ years). Important R&D results have been achieved. The new pilot plant is close to commissioning. New exciting aerogel product lines that we could not have imagined before are coming into existence. Multiple patent applications were filed and more are in preparation.

9. Local business support in our area such as from WIGOS (Wirtschaftsförderungsgesellschaft Osnabrücker Land mbH) and the ICO (InnovationsCentrum Osnabrück) has been stellar.

Thank you very much to Marc, Dirk, Alberto, Raman, Pavel, Dr. Wulf, Marcus and to all our partners!

Two-year anniversary of aerogel-it celebrated in Hamburg.

We are very happy and honored to have been among the three start-up finalists chosen for this years #Sustainability Challenge 2023 by the DGNB German Sustainable Building Council.

Our CEO Marc presented our activities and materials like our 100% bio-based lignin aerogels as green superinsulation. Even though we did not win the prize in the end, we received lots and lots of positive feedback from the #Construction community members at the day of sustainability #TdN23 in Stuttgart. Our heartfelt congratulations go to the winner STRAMENTEC GmbH and their great straw-based solution!

Together with the huge number of requests we received over the last months from companies, home owners, architects etc., this confirms to us that we are on the right path with our approach and solutions. We firmly believe that aerogels will play a decisive role towards improved energy efficiency and CO2 reduction in the Construction industry – but also in multiple other industries ! The market signals are firming up.

An exciting period for us at aerogel-it.

Photos: DGNB

We are very happy to announce that aerogel-it recently joined the Carbon Concrete Composite association. The team will be present at the BAU 2023 in München, where our 100% bio-based lignin aerogel and our biomineral aerogel will be exhibited in a carbon-reinforced concrete sandwich element on the C3 booth. A prefab element with our new aerogel products is shown in the photo below.

We strongly believe in the powerful combination of slim carbon concrete and aerogel insulation to minimize wall thickness and improve energy efficiency in use. With bio-based aerogels, embodied CO2 can be reduced strongly. With advanced modular prefab technology, as driven by C3, highly efficient construction will be possible.

Since our new bio-based aerogel products will still take some time to arrive as we are setting up financing followed by construction of our first production plant, we will soon offer other aerogel products to serve the already strong demand of our customers especially in the Construction industry – stay tuned for updates!

Photo by Mario Stelzmann/HTWK

Carbon concrete prefab element with lignin bioaerogel and biomineral aerogel by aerogel-it