Sustainability, renewable resources and recycling

Sustainable materials are raw materials and resulting products that are considered to be significantly better for people and environment after extensive evaluation of the raw material source, material properties and life cycle assessment. One focus is the increased use of renewable raw materials, such as wood, natural fibers and biopolymers, in order to guarantee long-term availability on the one hand and to meet the increasingly growing requirements of consumers on the other. Sustainable materials with a wide range of properties can be produced through targeted combinations of available renewable raw materials. In addition, the materials have to fulfill a large number of technical requirements to replace petrochemical products that have been used up to now.

Current research topics are:

• Fungal mycelium-based materials
• Vegan imitation leather
• Technical natural fiber and hybrid fabrics
• Wood foam
• Wood-metal multilayer materials

In this thematic focus, the Fraunhofer Project Center works on solutions for products and components made of plastics, fiber-plastic composites and metal-plastic composites, which cannot be reused at the end of their life cycle and for which no reuse concepts were provided during the product development process.

The aim is to develop ecological and economical solutions in order to recover used resources in the form of recycling materials in the best possible quality. We consider each product individually and try to find, modify or develop suitable processes. In most cases, it is of great importance not only to develop processes for the recovery of materials, but also to develop products in which these materials with their specific properties can be used.

Recycling and reuse options are taken into account when the product is created.

• Design, testing and evaluation of individual reuse and recycling concepts and technologies
• Recycling of lightweight vehicle components
• Use of recycled fibers in BMC / SMC materials

Today the recycling and the development of solutions for material reuse in the background of a resource-saving circular economy begins with the product and process design.

The Fraunhofer Project Center Wolfsburg focuses on the development of reuse solutions in product creation processes, both at the material and component level. At the material level, the focus of our work is a simple, inexpensive and pure separation of the various materials (especially in the case of multi-material components and products) as well as the recycling of the materials.

An innovative approach is the reuse of entire components or assemblies at the end of a product life cycle. These components are developed in a way that several life cycles are possible. Fiber-plastic composites are particularly suitable here due to their properties. This approach is accompanied by appropriate remanufacturing and repair processes for the reusable components.

• "Design for Recycling and Circularity": Usage of fiber reinforced plastics for durable and reusable components
• Remanufacturing and repair processes for EoL components made of plastics, fiber reinforced plastics and multi-material systems (metal / plastic / FRP)
• Development of switchable adhesives for a separate sorting of multilayer materials
• Integration of thermally induced mechanical separation layers (laminate layer) for the defined separation of multi-material and fiber composite structures

In the area of sustainable production and factory systems, methods, digital tools and technologies for the digital and biological transformation of industrial production and factory systems are developed with the aim of increased energy and resource efficiency, substitution by environmentally friendly operating materials and resilience.

To this end, biohybrid manufacturing technologies are used to achieve a high degree of resource utilization and close material cycles already during production. The life cycle perspective based on analyses, evaluations and engineering of complex technical product systems (computer-aided life cycle engineering) is fundamental for a sustainable factory design.

In this context all subsystems of the factory (production machines and process chains, technical building equipment and building envelope) and all material, energy and information flows are considered. Cyber-physical production systems form the methodological framework for improving production in planning and operation. Innovative approaches to data acquisition and analysis enable model-based decision support.

Focus:

• Resource efficiency & resilience
• Factory design & production management
• Biologicalisation of manufacturing
• Digitalization of production systems
• Computer Integrated Life Cycle Engineering