Poster award for Alina Hermann
This year's 4th International BioSC Symposium gave an audience to talks from all fields of bioeconomy, with the focus on topics such as "Innovative concepts for green value chains", "(regional) implementation of the bioeconomy" and "user-centred design methods in the bioeconomy". The work group Herres-Pawlis contributed several posters to the topic of sustainable bioinspired synthesis at the poster session of the conference. The poster presented by Alina Hermann entitled "Renewables to high-performance bioplastics by sustainable production ways (R2HPBio)" was awarded as one of the best three posters.
The poster explained the current results of the interdisciplinary BioSC Seed Fund 2.0 project "R2HPBio". In this project, fluid process engineers work together with inorganic and macromolecular chemists to develop the life cycle of novel bioplastics. Platform chemicals biotechnologically produced from biomass are purified electrochemically and polymerised into linear polymers using robust, biodegradable metal catalysts. The resulting polymers are then functionalised for specific applications and their biodegradability is investigated, e.g. through the degradation of enzymes, bacteria or chemical processes.