(German title: Nachhaltiges Bauen – Biosandstein durch mikrobiologisch induzierte Calciumcarbonatfällung)

At more than 10 km³ per year, concrete is the most widely used building material in the world. One of the main components of concrete is cement, which is produced from limestone at high temperatures. During the so-called burning of cement clinker, the temperatures are around 1450 °C. This manufacturing process results in around 8.6% of global anthropogenic CO2 emissions from the production of cement. For this reason, researchers around the world are trying to find alternatives for the use of cement. One promising approach is microbiologically induced calcium carbonate precipitation (MICP) Further information

In the coming decades, dwindling resources will lead to a change in the supply of raw materials that every developed society will have to face. It will become necessary to integrate carbon-containing building blocks from sustainable resources into material flows. This will require new chemical reactions, robust catalyst systems, highly efficient separation processes and new concepts for process control.  Further information

The work of the Advanced Materials Engineering (AME) profile area focuses on the experimental and theoretical analysis of the complex relationships between material, manufacturing process, resulting microstructure and the resulting application properties along the entire process chain from raw material to component. Based on this, optimized or completely new individual processes and / or process chains for mechanical engineering and process engineering components are developed. The materials considered range from steels and cast iron to non-ferrous alloys and polymer materials through to hybrid material systems. Further information

Electricity generation with microorganisms in the form of microbial fuel cells (MFC, release of electrons to the working electrode) has been known for over a century and has been studied many times. Microbial electrosynthesis (MES, absorption of electrons from the working electrode), on the other hand, has only been studied in more detail for a few years, with the previous focus being primarily on bioremediation. The uptake of electrons from an electrode or from a chemical substance (electron mediator) shifts the redox balance of the microorganism's pyridine nucleotide pool towards NADH. Due to this increased availability of reduced cofactors, the MES systems can be used for the production of reduced products such as butanol and ethanol. Further information

The use of plant cell cultures for the production of pharmacologically active compounds has long been the subject of intensive international research. Nevertheless, industrial application has so far been limited to a few examples. However, the wide range of biologically active compounds in plants requires further process engineering developments in order to establish new processes. The Chair of Bioprocess Engineering focuses in particular on the cultivation of CMCs (cambial meristematic cells) from basil for the production of triterpenes and on the extraction of sulphated heteropolysaccharides from brown algae and their cultivation in bioreactors. Further information