Highlights from research and development

Larger open workspaces are becoming increasingly common - they are intended to promote fast and easy communication between employees. However, when it comes to open plan offices, detailed integral planning is essential in order to achieve good working conditions in the rooms. 

New micro-optical structures offer solutions to this: Without causing glare, they direct daylight to areas inside a building that are far away from the façade and also enable workplaces close to windows to be electrically illuminated via transparent façades.

GENERIS® is the key to holistic support in the creation of a building ecobalance. The software can be used to model a building from an catalog of standard constructions, to additionally enter the pre-calculated operating parameters and to subsequently evaluate the building project with regard to the results of its life cycle assessment.  

Do you want to reduce energy consumption in buildings? The most effective way to do this is to insulate the building envelope. The disadvantage: although current insulation materials are highly effective, manufacturing and recycling them is anything but sustainable. But not so cattail, called typha in Latin. As a raw material for industrial use, cattail has numerous ecological and economic advantages.

Carbon Black is one of the most important components of rubber articles. However, the production is extremely problematic. A newly developed preparation process developed by the Fraunhofer IBP can cover a good 50 percent of the carbon black market with this secondary raw material.

If biomass incineration plants are to be operated with low emissions, they have to be equipped with appropriate dust filter technologies. The Combustion and Environmental Technology Group has been working on the development of adequate dust collection systems since 2015.