elements 39, issue 2 | 2012 - evonik industries€¦ · quarterly science newsletter issue 2|2012....

IntervIew

“there’s no success without trust in a working partnership.”PrOJeCt HOUSe SYSteMS InteGrAtIOn

Product and process go hand in handCAtALYSIS

Profiling simplifies scale-up in PMPC production

elements39Quarterly Science newsletter Issue 2|2012

2 Contents

elements39 Issue 2|2012

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CoVeR PHoto

Irina Profir, doctoral candidate at LIKAT, in Evonik’s new laboratory at LIKAT

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4 Test plant for CO2 separation started up 4 BMBF PeTrA project to simplify administration of biopharmaceuticals 5 Opening of Advanced Project House in Taiwan 6 New university partner in China 6 Evonik and LIKAT expand research cooperation in catalysis

InteRVIeW

7 “There’s no success without trust in a working partnership.”

PRoJeCt HoUse sYsteMs InteGRAtIon

10 Product and process go hand in hand

CoMMent

18 Innovations make history

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21 Honorary professorship for Dr. Klaus Engel 21 Sale of the colorants business 22 Groundbreaking ceremony for new organics production facility 22 Biogas upgrading: New plant for hollow fiber membrane modules 23 Evonik invests in High-Tech Gründerfonds II 23 Groundbreaking ceremony for new H2O2 plant in China

CAtALYsIs

24 New tool for characterizing catalysts: Profiling simplifies scale-up in PMPC production

MedICAL teCHnoLoGY 28 Implants made from PEEK ensure new quality in medicine

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34 Lightweight design solutions for China automotive industry 34 The first-ever electrical sports car with a weight below 1,000 kg 35 VESTAMID® HTplus in mass-produced gearshift levers 35 High-performance plastics: Certified bio-based

InnoVAtIon MAnAGeMent

36 Identifying and developing new markets

desIGnInG WItH PoLYMeRs 40 Protective measures for treasures

neWs 42 Student project presented in Marl 42 More than 400 offshore pipes with VESTAMID® NRG 43 Creavis starts with new BISON project

43 Credits

edItoRIAL 3


resources

Patrik WohlhauserMember of the Executive Board of Evonik Industries AG

In 2011, Evonik generated sales of €1.9 billion with products and applications that were developed in the last five years—and there will be more to come. Indeed, the Group’s R&D pipeline is amply filled with and balanced by 450 short-, medium-, and long-term projects. Last year, the first patent applications placed Evonik among the leaders in specialty chemistry; in 2011, we filed 300 new patents, while our total number of patents and applications exceeded 24,000.

Our R&D activities are guided by our strategy of concentrating on high-growth megatrends such as health, nutrition, resource efficiency, and globalization—on forward-looking markets that create not only financial, but also social value. In other words, we keep investing in R&D a rich store of resources for the purpose of pro-tecting our natural resources. And to ensure that this stockpile does not dwindle away, we increased our R&D expenditures in 2011 to €365 million, or eight percent more than the previous year.

This is money well spent, as is demonstrated by our Project House Systems Inte-gration, which is now wrapping up its activities. The employees of the project house found solutions for plastic glazing for cars, concentrating solar thermal energy, and for the production of thin fibers for filtration applications. As disparate as these developments are, they all share the same goals: They advance the development of sustainable products and processes, in keeping with our strategy, and they make an important contribution to energy and resource efficiency. Of the nine projects the project house worked on in its three-year run, seven have already been returned to the participating business lines, which are now bringing them to market maturity. These results are also striking for the fact that the project house began its activities in early 2009 at an ill-omened time: The height of the financial and economic crisis, when economizing was paramount. Evonik cut costs like everyone else, but not in R&D. We launched the project house as planned.

Another example of our commitment to using our research to save resources can be found in our Health & Nutrition Business Unit, which is currently expanding its market activities to aquaculture. Adding our amino acids to fish feed can save valuable fish meal that would otherwise have to be mixed with the feed as a source of protein, and which often comes from natural stocks of wild marine animals. At least three kilograms of captured fish are required to produce one kilogram of edible fish. Our amino acids also allow fish and crustaceans to digest the feed better, so that more animals receive optimal nutrition with the same amount of feed. For this reason, Health & Nutrition has developed new products that are an optimized methionine source for shrimp and other crustaceans—innovative products designed to help ensure that fewer wild fish are required for aquaculture. This preserves the stocks of wild fish, and it counteracts overfishing. These new products are perhaps only a small but nevertheless effective step toward a future in which we will have to feed a constantly growing world population. In my view, this future will be worth living only if we succeed in utilizing food, as a resource, as efficiently as possible.


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test plant for CO2 separation started up

At the foot of the chimney of STEAG’s cogeneration plant in Herne, a nine-meter-high test plant has been built for evaluating new absorbents. The test plant, which is supposed to allow researchers to investigate absorbents for separating CO2 from industrial and waste gases under real conditions, is part of the Efficient CO2 Separation (EffiCO2) Project of Creavis’ Science-to-Business Center Eco².

Evonik’s business units are working together with experts from industry and science to develop new absorbents that should significantly reduce ener-gy requirements for CO2 separation. The aim is to investigate these new substances both under real conditions and in the laboratory. Over the next few weeks, the test plant will be tested for this purpose with commercially available absorption media to obtain a reference process for the new absor-bents.

For the investigations which are to occur under real conditions, the power plant has been built in such a way that part of the flue gas can be taken direct-ly from the chimney and characterized by online analytics. The entire system has been made of glass to make it easy to view the process.

Before the CO2 is separated from the flue gas, interfering flue-gas com-ponents are removed in a scrubber column. Connected to this is the absorp-tion column, in which the CO2 contained in the flue gas is absorbed. In a third unit, the absorption medium is regenerated and pure CO2 obtained, which is analyzed and returned to the chimney. The regenerated absorption medium is reconveyed to the absorption column and a continuous process is made possible. The EffiCO2 project is funded by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF).

A greenhouse gas, CO2 is considered to be the single-most important cause of climate change. Global CO2 emissions in 2010 amounted to more than 33 gigatons, an increase of about 30 percent over 1990. The energy sector emits the highest proportion of CO2. Because of mounting global energy requirements, the energy sector will continue in the future to account for a large share of CO2 emissions. To meet energy requirements and simul-taneously reduce CO2 emissions, various CO2 separation technologies are being developed and tested worldwide.

the nine-meter-high test plant for CO2 separation

BMBF PetrA project to simplify administration of biopharmaceuticals

The goal of the interdisciplinary research pro-ject PeTrA*, which is sponsored by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF), is to remove the need for injections for biopharmaceuticals used for example in cancer immunotherapy by devel-oping spray and tablet formulations which include innovative biofunctional polymers. The project is designed to simplify the admin-istration of biopharmaceuticals and to improve their bioavailability. PeTrA is managed by a consortium consisting of Evonik Indus tries

principles and for cancer immunotherapy. Many of these highly successful drugs im -prove patient life quality and have enormous technological potential for the pharmaceuti-cal industry.

Today, biopharmaceuticals are mostly administered by injection. Indeed, there is no efficient or broadly applicable system for administering them via the mouth (oral) or through the respiratory pathways (inhalation) because they are not easily absorbed by the mucous membranes of the gastrointestinal tract and respiration system, and tend to be degraded in the stomach before they can have an effect on the body. The PeTrA proj-ect aims at overcoming these obstacles by packaging highly sensitive biopharmaceuti-cals into nano- and micro-sized particles that transport the active ingredients through the mucous membranes and protect them from degradation in the stomach.

AG, Merck KGaA, EMC microcollections GmbH (a hightech company for peptide and peptidomimetics synthesis), the Helmholtz Center for Infection Research (HZI), and the Fraunhofer Institute for Interfacial Engi neer-ing and Biotechnology (IGB).

The project, which started on July 1, 2011, is scheduled to last for three years Ap prox -imately half of the €6 million budget is sup-ported by the three industry partners. The PeTrA consortium also includes the Friedrich Schiller University in Jena, Saarland Univer-sity, the University of Nij megen (Neth er-lands), Bonn University Hospital, the Charité Hospital Berlin, Kiel University, and Würz-burg Uni versity.

Biopharmaceuticals have been on the advance for years in modern drug therapy. They include peptides, proteins and antibod-ies, nucleic acids, and blood components, that all represent a promising basis for new active


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Mem ber of the Executive Board responsible for innovation management.

Evonik evaluated the technical and market success probability of potential project topics such as lighting, displays, touch panels, photo-voltaic, LEDs, and functional coatings. With its opening, several projects have been start-ed up with the company’s business units’ and business lines’ commitment and support. In addition, a New Business Develop ment func-tion will be built up to identify new business opportunities in the electronics industry. The start focuses on Taiwan, main land China, and Korea.

“We’re really glad to see that the con-struction of office and labs has been com-pleted at ITRI even faster than planned. For us, ITRI is the best place to start, as it provides good infrastructure and a condensed know-how platform, as well as the local network.” said Dr. Michael Cölle, head of the APH,

during the opening ceremony. “We’ve built up a technical team made up of local talents, and the team will gradually increase accord-ing to the project needs in the future. We expect to foster customer interaction con-tinuously and generate new business.”

Located in one of the world’s most impor-tant electronics markets, the APH finds a new way for Evonik to access the market. The APH is to give rise to a new R&D competence center for the Group in Asia.

Opening of Advanced Project House in taiwan

Evonik has opened its Light & Electronics Advanced Project House (APH) in Taiwan. The new APH is located in Industrial Tech-nology Research Institute (ITRI) in Hsinchu, one of Taiwan’s leading research institutes. “As the first project house Evonik established outside of Germany, it is quite literally a big step for Evonik in innovation in Greater China and Asia,” commented Dr. Dahai Yu, member of the Executive Board responsible for Asia, at the opening ceremony held in ITRI. “The opening of the Light & Electronics APH is a new stepping stone for entering into new markets and the globalization of R&D.”

“The market is constantly changing. With the APH in Taiwan, we aim to generate a link to the growing light and electronics industry in Asia, and identify and realize new business opportunities through joint technical devel-opments and close hands-on interactions with our customers,” said Patrik Wohlhauser,

“Tablets and sprays are more convenient for patients, particularly in long-term therapies which can require continuous drug intake over weeks or months,” says Dr. Rosario Lizio about the motivation of the research partners. Lizio, the PeTrA project coordinator, is also the head of the Discovery & Development department of Pharma Polymers, a product line of the Health Care Business Line of Evonik specialized in drug delivery systems.

*PeTrA stands for “Platform for efficient epithelial transport of pharmaceutical applications with inno -vative particular carrier systems” (Evonik-Funding Ref. No.: 13N11454) and is part of the BMBF grant project “Efficient drug transport in biological sys-tems—BioMatVital: Biotransporters.”

From left to right: Dr. Michael Cölle (Head of the Advanced Project House Light & electronics), Dr. Peter nagler (Chief Innovation Officer evonik), Dr. Ming-Ji wu (Ministry of economic Affairs), Dr. Dahai Yu (executive Board Member evonik), Dr. Jonq-Min Liu (executive vice President ItrI), Dr. Hans-Josef ritzert (President evonik Greater China), Jia Ming Liu (General Director MCL, ItrI), Dr. Gerard Berote (President evonik taiwan)


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new university partner in China

Premiere in China: Evonik has sealed its first strategic university partnership in Asia with Shanghai Jiaotong University (SJTU). The cooperation agreement was signed by SJTU Vice President Xu Fei and Dr. Hans-Josef Ritzert, Regional President Greater China, with Dr. Dahai Yu, Evonik Executive Board Member, and Prof. Zhang Jie, SJTU President, also in attendance at the ceremony.

Speaking at the event, Dr. Dahai Yu said, “I am delighted about this strategic cooperation with Jiaotong University. Our partner-ship will strengthen research and development cooperation in the chemicals field and beyond.” Prof. Zhang Jie likewise welcomed the new partnership, saying, “Innovation is the key to success, both for Evonik and for Jiaotong University. I am certain that our coop-eration will generate genuine innovative power on both sides.”

As one of Asia’s leading universities for the natural sciences and technology, SJTU offers modern resources for research and development. This cooperation deal provides Evonik access to excellent research facilities, technologies, and high-tech apparatus at the university. Awarded the title of “Evonik Professor,” three scientists at SJTU will conduct Evonik-funded R&D projects and hold scientific lectures for Evonik employees.

Agreement was likewise reached on close cooperation in the area of intellectual property law. Experts from Evonik are also slot-ted to hold an industrial chemicals seminar at SJTU every two weeks. And Evonik will provide opportunities for students at SJTU to complete a course of practical training at the company.

The Strategic Partner University Program is an important part of the strategy pursued by Evonik’s Corporate Innovation Strategy & Management to develop partnership agreements with leading universities all over the world.

Evonik and the Leibniz Institute for Catalysis (LIKAT) are planning to expand their cooperation in the area of ca-talysis research for the long term. The Institute has been successfully working with Evonik in the field of catalysis for more than ten years and the parties recently agreed to extend their long-term cooperation.

For this purpose, the Advanced Intermediates Business Unit of Evonik has set up a new laboratory in the LIKAT facility, which will be dedicated to the development of new catalysts and the optimization of existing production processes. Evonik agreed to make a large investment available for this purpose in a framework agreement.

“Our cooperation has generated a large number of innovations and patents over the past years,” says Prof. Dr. Stefan Buchholz, head of Innovation Management of the Evonik Advanced Intermediates Business Unit. “We plan to follow up on this success by bringing additional catalysis research products to commercial maturity in the years to come.”

Catalysis is considered one of the most significant levers of efficient chemical production and is a key tech-nology of the 21st century. It helps save energy and re -sources and reduces by-products and waste in chemical production. The Advanced Intermediates Business Unit uses the catalysts for the production of plasticizers in its integrated C4 technology platform in the Marl Chemical Park.

LIKAT, the largest European research institute in the area of applied catalysis, is an internationally leading insti-tute for the research and development of homogeneous and heterogeneous catalysts as well as catalytic process-es and technologies. The main focus of its scientific work is on gaining new insights into basic catalysis research and studying their application to technical concepts.

evonik and LIKAt expand research cooperation in catalysis


7InteRVIeW

“There’s no success without trust in a working partnership.”

Evonik and the Leibniz Institute for Catalysis (LIKAT) in Rostock (Germany) have been working together for over a decade. The cooperation with the Performance Intermediates Business Line in particular has produced numerous pat-ents and new catalysts. The new lab at LIKAT cements Evonik’s commitment to broadening the partnership, and Prof. Matthias Beller, in charge of LIKAT, and Prof. Stefan Buchholz, head of Innovation Management at Evonik’s Advanced Intermediates Business Unit, share their thoughts on what this entails.

which areas will you be researching together in the new lab?

Buchholz: The main joint research do -main at the EVA, the Evonik Advanced Catalysis Lab@LIKAT, centers on new catalysts for manufacturing processes at the Performance Intermediates Business Line. The focus is on hydroformylation, globally the most important homogenous catalytic reaction to use organometallic catalysts. More than ten million metric tons of products, mostly plasticizer alco-hols and surfactants, are manufactured 333

Prof. Matthias Beller (left), in charge of LIKAt, and Prof. Stefan Buchholz, head of Innovation Management at evonik’s Advanced Intermediates Business Unit

with it every year. With an annual pro-duction capacity of just over 400,000 metric tons, Evonik is one of the leading manufacturers of isononanol (INA) and 2-propylheptanol (2PH), which are used mainly in making two types of plasticiz-ers: Diisononyl phthalate (DINP) and di(2-propyl heptyl) phtha late (DPHP). DINP and DPHP belong to the group of high-molecular-weight phthalates, which distinguish themselves through their superior application engineering profile and toxicological safety.

Beller: We also look forward to putting the catalysis expertise gained over so many years to work on carbonylations and hydroformylations. One idea is to functionalize renewable resources into viable products for Evonik. We believe that renewables will become increasingly important in coming years. While this opens up many new opportunities, it is also an area that presents major challen-ges—and they must be met. We intend to venture into uncharted territory, too. It’s a high-risk proposition from a re -search standpoint, but it may well also yield significant economic rewards.

what are the objectives?

Buchholz: The goal for Evonik is to continue strengthening our leadership position, especially in hydroformylation. New catalyst systems, for instance, would enable us to achieve both higher yields as well as even higher selectivities for target molecules.

Here, the key is to keep catalyst costs under control. Hydroformylation catalysts are often based on rhodium, an extremely rare precious metal that’s several times more expensive than gold. Ligands, mostly organic phosphines or phosphites, stabilize the rhodium cata-lysts, which in turn helps minimize pre-cious metal loss. In addition, they also have a decisive impact on catalyst activ-ity and selectivity. And because manu-facturing ligands is often a complex and expensive process, we have to make sure that the ligands we jointly develop are also economically feasible in terms of their production cost.

Another key aspect is that ligands have to remain stable under extreme reaction conditions, that is, high pressure and high temperature, and deliver the end-


8 InteRVIeW

product in a desired grade. Plasticizer alcohol viscosity, for instance, is a key ap-plication engineering parameter that’s es-sent ial ly inf luenced t hrough catalyst selectivity.

What we’ve just talked about are mid-range goals. We’re also thinking more long-term. One such project in-volves revisiting the old dogma that only rhodium and cobalt can efficiently cata-lyze the hydroformylation. Our explor-atory work at LIKAT shows that palla-dium and iridium present an heretofore untapped potential for carbonylation reactions. Together with LIKAT and the work group under Prof. Arno Behr at the Technical University of Dortmund, an additional partner in the scope of the Proforming Project funded by the BMBF (Federal Ministry of Education and Re-search), we intend to find out what that potential is and how to realize it.

Beller: The idea is to provide the vari-ous Evonik business units with funda-mental innovations in homogenous and heterogeneous catalysis. This will in turn spark concrete bilateral projects, which Evonik could then scale up indus-trially.

who’ll be doing what? Is evonik’s role limited to providing the funding?

Beller: That’s definitely not the case here. Funding is important and it can accelerate research projects, but it’s no guarantee for success. Success comes from working together and from inten-sive exchange with academic research.

Buchholz: The sheer diversity of demands placed on the catalysts to be developed makes abundantly clear that only a broadly based, methodical approach has the greater chances of success. The compelling advantage is that Evonik brings decades of accumulated experi-ence and expertise in production to the table, while LIKAT contributes the latest findings from basic research. These two complementary perspectives are not only im portant in driving current proj-

ects towards a successful outcome, but also create a steady source of new research topics.

what benefits can LIKAt derive from the partnership?

Beller: The Leibniz Institute for Cataly-sis is one of the world’s largest public research facilities in the area of applied catalysis. Complementing the research work at German universities and Max Planck Institutes, LIKAT’s declared goal is to help translate basic research find-ings into industrial applications. Yet this can only be achieved in cooperation with partners from industry. Or put dif-ferently: We definitely share in the suc-cess of technical solutions arrived at jointly in the lab.

And what’s in it for evonik?

Buchholz: The longstanding, broadly based cooperation with LIKAT has played a major role in systematically securing and expanding our technologi-cal edge in the area of hydroformylation but also in telomerization. Besides the concrete research findings, we also value the dialogue with Mr. Beller, an internationally recognized and leading catalysis researcher, and with Prof. Armin Börner as very inspiring—and that greatly stimulates our internal develop-ment work.

Here, personal exchange is key—even with all the advanced communication tools and methods available today, it is still indispensable to the creative pro-cess. That’s why we not only have proj-ect leaders talking with each other, but also the people in the team—the group heads and doctoral candidates at LIKAT, and the researchers at Evonik. This pro x-imity gives PhD candidates insights into industrial research, and it helps them prepare for their career. Several doc - to ral candidates appreciated this aspect to the extent that they signed on with Evonik. The ability to interact with future colleagues in a workplace set - t ing is an invaluable advantage, too.

333 Besides, it is also the best way to spread the knowledge gained as a team effort throughout the company.

what are the cons, if any, of such a research partnership?

Beller: Compared to, say, a project funded by the German research commu-nity, academic freedom does have to operate within a more defined frame-work in this type of cooperation. As a researcher, one might view this as a con-straint, but the way I see it, the benefits far outweigh any perceived disadvan-tages.

Buchholz: The costs and the benefits—and the latter shouldn’t be construed as short-term profit optimization—have to be constantly weighed against each other. Of course, the need to be as open as possible to enable the partner to get fully involved sometimes conflicts with the need to respect the necessary obli-gations that come with intellectual prop-erty, and that is why it is so important to build trust. Trust, as our experience with LIKAT has shown, thrives espe-cially well in a long-term partnership.

You have been working together now for over ten years. How has the partnership evolved over time?

Beller: In the beginning the cooperation between Evonik and my colleague Armin Börner in Rostock was focused on devel-oping better hydroformylation catalysts for plasticizer alcohols. We essentially synthesized and catalytically tested new organometallic complexes and organic ligands for catalyst modification. This fell short of the goal to develop industri-ally viable and feasible systems, how-ever. That’s why we expanded the scope to include mechanistic experiments, detailed catalyst studies, and structural activity tests. In 2009 our findings were implemented into practice in Evonik’s integrated C4 technology platform in Marl. Something we naturally found very gratifying.


9InteRVIeW

Buchholz: If you want to develop advanced chemical manufacturing pro-cesses, you need to know the catalysis cycle. And that requires deep method-ological expertise in many areas: In in-situ IR and NMR spectroscopy, in theoretical chemistry, and in ligand syn-thesis. We’ve systematically grown our competencies in these areas and today we reap the ben efits in the new products and processes we develop as well as in our joint explor atory work.

Beller: The past two years have also shown us that other chemical technolo-gies are potentially attractive to Evonik. In this regard, we support our colleagues in Marl in establishing a strong patent basis.

Looking back, I can say that, together, we’ve definitely met our share of chal-lenges over the years. And we managed that to a large part on the basis of the trust that exists between us as partners. This is not something that can be taken for granted, and at this stage I would like to take the opportunity to thank Mr.

Buchholz and Prof. Robert Franke and also Dr. Klaus-Diether Wiese as repre-sentatives of Evonik.

Catalysis is a key technology for the chemical industry. How does Germany compare internationally? And what part do partnerships play?

Buchholz: Germany continues to rank at the top. Here, LIKAT’s scientific excellence makes it stand out even more. What distinguishes it from other cataly-sis research facilities in Germany and Europe is the strong focus on practical implementation.

LIKAT is only following through on a longstanding tradition. In Germany, the chemical industry and academic re-search institutes have always maintained close ties—much more so than in many other countries, where these two do-mains are almost hostile to each other, or where there’s no strong, innovation-driven chemical industry to enable this kind of partnership approach to develop in the first place. 777

the Leibniz Institute for Catalysis (LIKAt) in rostock (Germany)

There’s no doubt that the combination of openness to practical implementation and academic excellence is what makes LIKAT a preferred partner to Evonik.

Beller: High-performance catalysts are instrumental in ensuring that chemical reactions don’t consume more resources than necessary, by avoiding by-products and reducing energy requirements. They are key to economic as well as eco-logical value creation in the spirit of decoupling technological progress from the consumption of natural resources.

Germany has a preeminent position in catalysis research, both in basic and applied research. And on the academic side, with two Max Planck Institutes—the Max Planck Institute for Carbon Re-search in Mülheim on the Ruhr and the Fritz Haber Institute in Berlin—and the Leibniz Institute for Catalysis in Rostock as well as leading research groups at various universities such as Aachen, Berlin, Karlsruhe, and Munich, we have a very solid platform of excellence as well. However, it takes a working part-nership between academia and industry to make innovations happen—to translate research findings into viable, sustain-able, and feasible industrial processes. Our new joint lab has the best chances of playing a pivotal role in realizing this potential.

“If you want to develop advanced chemical manufacturing processes, you need to know the catalysis cycle.”


10 PRoJeCt HoUse sYsteMs InteGRAtIon

Chemical products have to satisfy customers’ requirements and the demands of the market completely. Over the past three years, Evonik’s developers in the Project House Systems Integration of Creavis Technologies & Innovation have paved the way for new applications for innovative materials.

[ text Dr. Michael Olbrich ]

ReseaRch in the ivory tower—this is a beloved met-aphor for describing the gap between scientific work and market reality. At Evonik, R&D has long forsaken the ivory tower in favor of efficient development work based on market requirements and megatrends. Evonik’s project houses, an element of the strategic research and development unit Creavis Technologies & Innovation, are one feature of its R&D landscape.

In many of these project houses, employees from a variety of disciplines and business units of the Group have worked together to develop ideas and in-novations since the year 2000. Over a period of three years, the employees combine their knowledge and their different experiences and advance their proj-ects single-mindedly, outside day-to-day operations. This allows them to build new areas of expertise and bring products and processes to market readiness faster.

While the first project houses focused primarily on the development of basic technology and products, their objective evolved over time to a greater focus on new processes and new applications—today, they

work in closer proximity to the market. Project hous es work on behalf of the Group to venture further into new markets than the business units, and it is an open question whether a project can be brought to suc-cessful completion within three years—whether a technically attractive solution will be found and, ul-timately, whether a marketable product is produced.

The work of the project houses, therefore, com-plements the research done in the business units by advancing medium-risk developments. But the risk is worth it: The interdisciplinary teamwork outside normal day-to-day business often proves to be a cat-alyst for pathbreaking ideas. And for the individual researchers, the limited duration of the project house commitment—combined with its high visibility among top management—is a challenge that promotes per-sonal development and extends employees’ horizons beyond their normal daily work.

As the strategic research and development unit of Evonik Industries, Creavis is commissioned to build new and sustainable businesses for Evonik and de-velop forward-looking technology platforms. The

Product and process go hand in hand


11PRoJeCt HoUse sYsteMs InteGRAtIon

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work of the project houses focuses on very funda-mental medium-risk research topics that span mul-tiple business units. High-risk research topics that represent completely new fields for Evonik are im-plemented in Creavis’ Science-to-Business (S2B) Centers.

The Project House Systems Integration began its work at the Hanau site in early 2009. Unlike the seven previous project houses, the 21 employees were not tasked with developing new technologies and prod-ucts but with finding new applications for existing (trial) products. They took a holistic approach to their R&D: The idea was to develop the product together with the required new processing technology so we can hand the customer not only a product but a sys-tem solution. These system solutions conquer the usual market entry barriers because they can be in-tegrated more easily into existing production pro-cesses or offered to the customer as an entirely re-designed process.

Product and process development go hand in hand: For example, a plastic may require a certain set

For example, the developers in the Project House Systems Integration researched lightweight design in cars from a variety of angles. to this end, they adopted a holistic r&D approach: to open up new applications for evonik’s (trial) products, they devel-oped the products, together with the required new processing tech-nology, into a system solution

of processing parameters, but the technological parameters at the processing end might be defined differently. This holistic approach and the coordina-tion of product and process were the starting point of development activities and an essential component of the work in the Project House Systems Integration. The objective was to develop economically attractive system solutions suitable for large-scale production. Evonik also develops additional competencies along the value-added chain, and creates added value through more efficient applications, resource- efficient processes, and/or more sustainable prod-ucts.

Partnership of product and process



Through close proximity to application and mar-ket, the tasks in the Project House Systems Inte - g ration beyond the actual technology were highly diverse: The employees evaluated processes for their commercial value, developed business models and plans, analyzed value-added chains in detail, prepared conceptual studies for potential production lines, and conducted life cycle assessments.

Work in the project house also placed specific demands on the employees. Skills such as creativity, network building, and adaptation to changed con-ditions are important prerequisites for success— unexpected R&D results often mean the modification of entire project plans.

In this regard, a key efficiency and creativity factor was the mixture of young and experienced employees. The employees in the Project House Sys-tems Integration had about 300 years of combined experience at their disposal, came from six different educational disciplines, and had previously worked in a variety of functions, from classical R&D, through production, to marketing and sales. They received additional support from 18 students, who were tack-ling a range of issues in work ranging from intern-ships to such projects as a diploma thesis, a Bachelor’s or Master’s thesis, or an MBA.

The success of the projects closely depends, not least, on an intense exchange with the participating

business units, precisely because of the market prox-imity of the development projects. Consequently, the “project sponsors” from the business units played a central role. They were the interface to the market and the customer, since they managed the starting products in the business unit and—if the project is successful—are in charge of further development and, ultimately, commercialization after the project house is concluded. They supported the projects, analyzed the findings, and ensured close internal communica-tion on the activities of the project house.

In the preparation stage of the project house, ideas and suggestions from various business units were collected and evaluated as part of a feasibility study. From a total of 75 proposals, nine projects were left that met the basic requirements for development in the Project House Systems Integration: The prod-uct has to be closely partnered with a specific pro-

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About 300 years of professional experience in a wide variety of functions and six different disciplines: the 21 employees of the Project House Systems Integration

Project house anchored in the business units

333



cessing method for an innovative application. The application itself cannot be blocked by third-party patents and must belong to a growth market. The competition must offer sufficient leeway, and not least: The innovation must promise new commercial success for the Group.

In all nine projects, the project managers each pursued several development routes at the same time, and investigated a number of potential fields of ap-plication. This increased the likelihood of success, and gave employees enough freedom to find the best solution for each, and the best possible route to it.

Lightweight construction was a key focus of the work in the Project House Systems Integration. In the Automotive Glazing project, PLEXIGLAS® glazing was developed to make vehicles lighter in weight and, therefore, increase fuel efficiency and reduce emis-sions.

The requirements for car windscreens are invari-ably high: High mechanical strength must be matched by high impact strength. The panes have to be UV- and weather-resistant, guarantee high light transmis-sion, and withstand temperatures of up to 80 °C with-out haziness. Scratch- and abrasion-resistance also play an important role.

The procedure was different, depending on the type of glazing and production quantities. For smaller, injection-molding panes installed in large piece 333

PLeXIGLAS® glazing is only about half as heavy as conventional glazing

The speed with which electric vehicles become operational largely depends on the performance of the battery. In cooperation with Evonik Lita rion GmbH, the experts in the Project House Systems Integration have worked on one of the most important chem ical components of the battery: The separator, which separates the electrodes in a battery cell. Based on Evonik’s existing SEPARION® separator, the project house investi-gated how the separator could be made thinner and lighter, for the purpose of increasing the amount of energy stored in the cell, and making the battery cells smaller and more compact. The challenge of this task is in cost-efficient mass production.

Sustainable mobility

BAtteRY teCHnoLoGY



counts, the researchers worked with the Perfor-mance Polymers Business Unit to develop a new impact-resistant molding compound. In 2011, several metric tons of the new compound were produced for the purpose of conducting injection-molding and ex-trusion tests under real conditions. At the same time, project house researchers developed various process-ing technologies and tested their suitability. One of their projects was to modify an injection-molding technology in such a way that PLEXIGLAS® can be combined with another plastic to form a multi-layer design in a single step.

These developments fit seamlessly into the strat-egy of the automobile industry of using primarily lightweight, fuel-saving materials in the future to meet guidelines on emissions and climate protection. PLEXIGLAS® glazing saves up to 50 percent of the weight of conventional glazing. The excellent acous-tic properties of the plastic system increases comfort, and the shatterproof material ensures heightened safety for passengers.

Transparent car roofs were another focus of automotive glazing. Because they are used in signi-

Prototype of roof glazing with integrated photovoltaic cells

New solutions for lighter vehicles

The expansion plans for renewable energies are extremely ambitious in countries like Germany, Spain, and the United States, but also in North Africa and the Arab world. Con cen-trating solar power (CSP) will play an important role in these plans. In addition to site factors, the profitability and achieve-ment of “grid parity” of CSP power plants depend heavily on the cost of the power plants. Collector fields, where the sun energy is converted to heat, are one cost driver. The savings potential is viewed as enormous: For example, if the parabolic or even flat collectors are no longer produced based on glass solar mirrors but on mirrored plastic, weight and transport costs drop, and the substructure in the solar field is considerably easier and more cost-effective to build.

Together with the Performance Polymers Business Unit and external partners, the team developed technical solu -tions for the reflector and the surface finish. The first mirror materials based on PLEXIGLAS® from Evonik are currently undergoing approval testing. The key to their market viability is not only durability but also the optimal reflection of the direct sunlight and a surface finish that, for example, protects against abrasion through sand and dust.

A systematic approach to new energy

ReneWABLe eneRGIes

Collectors for solar thermal energy. If they were made of reflective plastic instead of glass, the substructure would be easier and more cost-effective to build. the first mirror materials based on PLeXIGLAS® from evonik are current-ly undergoing approval testing



333

A sandwich made of rOHACeLL® rigid foam and fiber composite top layers is ideally suited to lightweight construction in the vehicle: this method of construction allows a unique combination of low weight and maximum mechanical stability

ficantly smaller piece counts, they are produced in a heat forming process. By the end of their first devel-opment year, they had already received approval from the German Federal Motor Transport Authority that covers not only roof glazing but also rear and fixed side windows. This meant that concrete projects with customers could be started as early as the second year of the project house. Various automobile manufac-turers are currently conducting street tests of the first PLEXIGLAS® glazing in prototype vehicles.

In another project, the developers investigated how a photovoltaic function might be integrated into the roof glazing. The challenge for developers of these power-supplying variants is that the PV cell and polymer composite show different thermal expansion coefficients. To ensure that the solar cells do not tear, the researchers developed a sandwich structure, in which the optically active cells are embedded in an elastomer matrix that is decoupled from the exterior PLEXIGLAS® composite layers. They have developed three different processing techniques in all for man-ufacturing such composites.

These composites, however, are flat PV semi- finished products that still have to be formed into the spherical shape of the roof glazing. The developers have successfully advanced these to prototype status: To make them operational, they produced prototyp-ical roofs for a standard subcompact car, including

roof glazing with integrated PV cells and transparent roof glazing without PV integration. Evonik’s objec-tive is to gather practical experience with this dem-onstration vehicle and, at the same time, convince automobile manufacturers and potential customers of the benefits of PLEXIGLAS® glazing solutions.

Transparent glazing: The first prototypes have already hit the streets

Evonik’s ROHACELL® rigid foam also makes a big contribution to the lightweight construction in the vehicle: In combination with high-strength cover layers, it creates an extremely rigid composite that finds potential applications in both the interior and exterior. Concrete applications have been and are now being tried out in numerous projects with customers: From construction components with rather simple requirements, such as rear seat backs, all the way to structurally relevant components, where ROHACELL® composites are far superior to conservative construction methods when it comes to energy absorption and stiffness.



But the key to commercial success for these com-posites is cost-efficient mass production. This was a special focus of the project, and there was a surpris-ing result: There is not just one economical process but a number of processes that provide the best cost efficiency, depending on the component and piece count.

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One of the technical highlights from the Project House Systems Integration is a new generation of polymer-based filter materials that can be used to separate fine dust from the waste gases of such installations as incinerators or cement plants. In cooperation with external machine manufacturers, this electrospinning process, as it is called, has been devel-oped for the highly temperature-resistant Polyimide P84 all the way to the pilot production scale. The secret to this material is fibers with a diameter significantly below one micrometer: In purely mathematical terms, a purchase order of one gram of polymer yields a fiber length of about 5,000 kilometers. This creates an extremely finely woven filter medium.

In electrospinning, a P84 solution is set in an electrical field under high voltage. When a certain electrical field strength is reached, the dosing electrode forms a “fiber jet” in the direction of the counter electrode. The solvent eva-porates and a fine fleece forms on a substrate in front of the counter electrode. The fibers are then stuck together and fixed on a stable support fabric. In close cooperation with the Performance Polymers Business Unit, the developers in the project house have created the basis for optimizing the filtration properties of the fiber material with an eye toward their end application. The newly acquired electrospinning plant in the project house even allows small-scale internal pilot production at Evonik Industries. This, in turn, will enable researchers to evaluate the ability of other polymers to be spun in this same way.

Fine dust doesn’t stand a chance

e-sPInnInG

A close-meshed filter medium for the deposition of fine particles, produced by elec-trospinning

Micromagnets in new applications

VP MAGSILICA® are highly versatile magnetic par-ticles. The brownish powder consists of ultrafine iron oxides embedded in a dense silicon dioxide matrix. Through induction, VP MAGSILICA® can be heated to over 500 °C in a few seconds without stirring. So the push of a button, for example, can generate local heat, such as that required by chemical crosslinking reactions, which can be accelerated significantly by the heat supply. These applications were investigated in the Bonding on Demand project.

Here, project house employees worked with equipment manufacturers and the Inorganic Materi-als Business Unit to develop new expertise in the in-ductive heating of plastics and adhesives, and build a complete application technology. With the help of mobile induction units, potential customers con-ducted pilot tests in production and addressed a num-ber of issues: How do we work VP MAGSILICA® into an adhesive or a rubber? How should we construct and design the induction apparatus? How do we achieve the best heat input?

One of the big potential applications for VP MAG-SILICA® is the crosslinking (vulcanization) of rubber profiles. In this process, the powder is added in small concentrations to the rubber formulation and heated immediately after extrusion, thereby vulcanizing the rubber. It became clear that the mechanical proper-ties of the hardened profiles are comparable to con-ventionally vulcanized rubbers.

Even modern insulating glass panes can be bonded faster and easier with the superparamagnetic pow-der. Normally, the double panes of modern windows are placed and bonded together in the edge region by an aluminum spacer. In order to fulfill the require-ments of the upcoming thermal insulation regulation, the aluminum will be omitted as a thermal bridge. In cooperation with a hotmelt adhesive manufacturer, the project house has developed a mounting process by which the aluminum spacer can be replaced by plastic.

Three years of work in the Project House Systems Integration have been crowned with success: At the end of the third year, all nine projects are still alive and continue to look promising. Seven of the nine projects have already been sent back to the par ti -



cipating business lines, while the other two will con-clude by the middle of this year. The individual busi-ness units now have the task of taking the technical development results to market readiness.

As different and multi-faceted as the projects are, they are quite similar in their strategic objectives: They contribute to energy and resource efficiency and advance the development of more sustainable products and processes for Evonik and its partners and customers. At the same time, the innovations in-crease the competitiveness of the company by open-ing up forward-looking markets, and by strengthen-ing customer loyalty through practical solutions with high added value.

The results of these projects are important not least because the Project House Systems Integration was planned and prepared in the midst of the eco-nomic crisis. But instead of slowing down work on the projects, it proved to be a challenge and oppor-tunity for everyone involved. The Group’s decision to invest in interdisciplinary and demanding research, even in economically challenging times, turned out to be the right strategy. Planning the project house based on the prevailing economic conditions did nothing to detract from its success. 777

dr. Michael olbrich is the head of the Project House Systems Integration. After studying chemistry at the Albert Ludwig University in Freiburg and receiving his PhD from the Institute for Macromolecular Chemistry there, he started his career in 1995 in the construction chemicals industry at the Polymer Institute Dr. R. Stenner GmbH, as an assistant to the CEO. In 1999, he was hired to be head of molded foam application technology at PolymerLatex GmbH & Co. KG. In 2001, he took a job with Evonik Röhm GmbH in the Binders and Additives Business Line. His last job there was head of global sales for the Road Mar k-ing and Casting Resins business segment. Since 2008, he has been working on the preliminary feasi bility study for the Project House Systems Integration at Creavis.+49 6181 59-4976, [email protected]

with vP MAGSILICA®, adhesives and plastics can be inductively heated to accelerate the crosslinking reaction. the Bonding on Demand project investigated the best way to coordinate the product and processing technology to achieve optimal results

On the way to the market


18 CoMMent

Innovations are, and always have been, an important cornerstone of a better future. To ensure the livelihood of future generations, then, we must continue to put good ideas into practice. But without social acceptance, even the best innovations will fail.

[ text Dr. Klaus Engel ]

What comes to mind? The answer is essential to the future of our country, because inspiration, new ideas, and innovation are some of Germany’s most important resources. Without innovation, we wouldn’t be able to maintain or improve our standard of living. Without innovation, we’ll not be able to drive forward a sustainable, eco-friendly lifestyle and economy. This insight is no longer truly innovative, but it’s still not generally accepted. We must make sure that Germany, the land of industry, the land of research and production, doesn’t become the land of denial and procrastination if the public refuses to recognize the economic underpinnings of our pros-perity.

In today’s Germany, the triumvirate of research, in-novation, and industry always inspires a great deal of skepticism, or even fear, which we have to counter with fair, fact-based arguments. If we can persuade the public and dispel its anxiety, we can achieve a great deal. It’s still worth our while to establish the facts.

Innovations are, and always have been, an impor-tant cornerstone of a better future. Indeed, they are our lifeboat. The fledgling Federal Republic of Ger-many is a good example. Sixty years ago today, in 1952, the new German constitutional state was al-ready three years old. The murderous world war had ended only seven years before. In 1952, rubble and

Innovations make history

A steady source of innovations for more than four decades: eUDrAGIt® tablet coating, which allows temporal and spatial control of the release of pharmaceutical active ingredients


19CoMMent

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sorrow were still part of everyday life in the divided Germany. In an address to the German people, Fed-eral President Theodor Heuss complained that priva-tion was “firmly rooted in many, many places.” And yet 1952 was also a year of new confidence, as the first fruits of the reconstruction became palpable. The German economic miracle was taking shape—through a lot of hard work, capital assistance from abroad, and, not least, inge nuity.

Innovation as a lifeboat to a better future? While Heuss lamented the poverty back then, he also spoke of confidence and “highly sophisticated inventions that would set the German people back on course.” An end-of-the-year review from 1952 proudly cele-brates the television: “We invented and built a num-ber of new machines.” Journalists can point to suc-cessful export trade fairs as proof. Even back then, the focus was always on innovations, new ideas that will prevail on the market—in Germany, but also abroad.

A core message from 1952 still holds true today; the economic prosperity of the people of our country is not based on the merging of simple components or by merely imitating the achievements of others. Our opportunities lie in forward thinking and improve-ments, in brainpower, and know-how. Sixty years later, in the Germany of the 21st century, this still ap-plies—even if we use different vocabulary. Ingenuity and industriousness were the bywords of 1952. Today, concepts such as innovative power and competitive-ness are more common.

The German economy was also gaining steam in-ternationally 60 years ago. As early as 1952, custom-ers around the globe associated “Made in Germany” on goods and products with quality. But the economic size classes have changed: Back then, it was sovereign nations, national economic systems or national econ-omies that competed with each other. In the wake of globalization, on the other hand, we’re more likely to talk of competition between alliances and world regions.

Another important difference between 1952 and 2012 is the time factor: The speed of innovations has increased. More than a half century passed from the time the television was invented to the time it was widely found in households across Germany. When it came to the mobile phone, that time span was only a little over ten years.

Over the last few decades, Germany has managed to maintain a healthy, powerful industrial climate—despite the crises and dramatic changes across entire industries. The capacity for self-renewal, innovation for our own sake, was a key factor in this regard. To-day, the chemical industry in Germany often serves

completely different markets, supplies entirely dif-ferent products than in 1952.

Evonik Industries itself reflects this change. The Group began operating under this name in 2007, only five years ago, thereby focusing its energies expressly on the power to create. The new company brought with it decades of experience from the chemical in-dustry—and an appreciation of the value of innova-tion. Evonik’s history contains names such as De-gussa, Chemische Werke Hüls, Th. Goldschmidt, and Röhm, just to mention a few. Even in the decades be-fore the name change, these companies and groups were no strangers to innovation. Some milestones from Evonik’s history provide good illustrations.

EUDRAGIT®, the protective coating for tablets, came on the market in the 1950s and made it possible, for the first time, to control the release of a medical agent in the patient’s body.

In the colorful 1960s, plastic was king, and aware-ness of environmental protection was on the rise. In 1964, the Group began producing proprietary biode-gradable detergents, the active cleansing agents

The core message is unchanged

Current research topics at evonik: A binder for corrosion protection formulations that significantly reduces, or avoids, the use of toxic heavy metals


20 CoMMent

for laundry detergents. Even research into cata-lysts for exhaust fumes from industry and traffic were gaining importance—more than 20 years before the law required cars to be fitted with catalysts.

In the 1970s, the oil crisis arrived and increased the prices of raw materials and energy. The chemical industry, in turn, introduced more economical and environmentally compatible products to the market. Among other advances, the Group made a key con-tribution to reducing the environmental impact of cars: The first production plant for MTBE—a lead sub-stitute important for the antiknock properties of gas-oline—was built in Marl in 1976.

The 1980s saw intense public debate over forest dieback, disarmament, and atomic energy. Across Germany, the Group at that time was peerless in its activities related to monosilane-gas—a starting mate-rial for the production of solar cells. The innovations of this decade also included additives for solvent-free coatings.

In the 1990s, Evonik also ensured that green ideas gave birth to tangible products: Its silicas and or-ganosilanes supplied two essential components for the production of tires that save fuel through ex-tremely low rolling resistance and thereby also pro-tect the environment. In addition, the Group transi-tioned increasingly to the production of surfactants from renewable raw materials. And about four dec-ades after its debut, the EUDRAGIT® tablet coating experienced another surge in innovation—the market launch of a new variant for patients who depend on continuous drug delivery.

Since the dawn of the 21st century, the Group has also focused its innovative power inwardly, adopting new structures in research and development—one of the most important sources for innovation. Its objec-tive is improved knowledge transfer and completely market-oriented R&D.

Currently, Evonik intends to benefit above all from the worldwide social development processes in health, nutrition, resource efficiency, and globaliza-tion. Some of the Group’s innovations include bricks for home construction that stand out for their special heat-insulating filler, and biopharmaceuticals that come as sprays or tablets and eliminate the need for injections. They also include binders for corrosion protection formulations that significantly reduce or avoid the use of toxic heavy metals.

Hydrogen peroxide—an environmentally friendly bleaching agent that replaces chlorine bleach—is a great example of a changing market. Another exam-ple is PLEXIGLAS®: The plastic was introduced on the market as early as the 1930s, and a new variant now provides noise protection for a heavily traveled

highway in southern China. And it demonstrates, once again, that the global innovation superhighway offers Germany, as an industrial nation, literally boundless opportunities.

All these examples support my core thesis: We cannot abandon our efforts to put good ideas into practice, because they ensure the livelihood of future generations. As always, the key here is dialogue: In-

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Continuing the dialogue

ner cities plagued by smog, lakes and rivers covered by foam from laundry detergents have all warned us to make changes. There can be no doubt that legis-lation and public pressure have helped bring about the transformation. But without innovation—in other words, without industrial practice—our progress would have been trifling.

This is why we should discuss the pros and cons of innovations and new projects in a spirit of fairness and commitment—without social acceptance, even the best innovations will fail. But at the same time, we shouldn’t allow endless, irrelevant debate to slam the brakes on us and make us veer off the lane of rea-son. Driving on the hard shoulder is dangerous. For an industrial nation like Germany, which depends on innovation, it’s particularly hazardous.

Dr. Klaus engel is Chairman of the executive Board of evonik Industries AG

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21neWs

Honorary professorship for Dr. Klaus engel

Dr. Klaus Engel (55), the Chairman of the Executive Board of Evonik Industries AG, recently received an honorary professorship from the School of Engineering at Duisburg-Essen University (UDE). Engel is the President of the Chemical Industry Association (VCI) and also chairs the Battery Technology Working Group in the National Platform for Electromobility, which was established by the German Chancellor.

As an industry expert, Engel keeps in touch with UDE professors regularly, but his practical insights will now benefit the curriculum of the school, too. He will give lectures within the scope of the “Duisburg Dialogs” and will be involved in designing a lecture series that will also feature discussions with other representatives of Evonik on sci-entific questions from an industry perspective. The objective is to give university students a practical perspective of applying basic sci-entific concepts in industrial and business contexts.

In his new capacity, Engel is particularly concerned about reach-ing out to junior scientists. “As a location for industry, Germany must continue maintaining the highest level of quality it is known for, and that goes for the future too, and the key to this lies in training and advancing talented and committed young people. I look forward to making a personal, practical contribution to this effort at Duisburg-Essen University,” he noted during the award ceremony of the hon-orary professorship in Duisburg, adding that Duisburg-Essen University is an example of establishing functional bridges between different sites. “Those efforts are not always successful,” Engel said. “There are always new obstacles to overcome, both in terms of space and content, which is essential for lasting success in science, research,

and teaching, as well as in the industry. It is my hope to use the hon-orary professorship for building bridges, between science and indus-try, theory and practice, and between people and markets. New insights become only genuinely valuable when they are shared.”

“Close contact with the industry is particularly important for engi-neering programs,” emphasized the university’s President, Prof. Ulrich Radtke. Dr. Engel is originally from Duisburg and holds a degree in chemistry from the University of Bochum.

At the award ceremony of the honorary professorship in Duisburg: north rhine-westphalia Minister for economic Affairs Harry voigtsberger, evonik CeO Dr. Klaus engel, and university President Prof. Ulrich radtke (from left to right)

Sale of the colorants business

On April 30, 2012, Evonik Industries sold its global colorants business to the U.S. private investment firm Arsenal Capital Partners. Evonik’s colorants business develops, pro-duces, and markets colorant systems for decorative coatings under the trademark

COLORTREND®. Its CHROMA-CHEM® prod-ucts are used for industrial applications includ-ing maintenance, marine, and wood coatings. In 2011 Evonik’s colorants business generated sales of around €130 million. With a global setup the colorants business employs more

than 300 people in its production sites and laboratories supported by sales and technical professionals. These facilities are located in the USA, Can ada, Brazil, Australia, China, Malaysia, and the Netherlands.

“We are delighted with the opportunity to acquire a leading global business in the colorants space,” said John Televantos, Partner at Arsenal and Co-Head of the firm’s Specialty Industrials Group. “The business has a strong reputation because of its people, technology, quality, and service. It provides a great plat-form to build a stronger global business in a sector that we understand and believe it will perform well as an independent company benefiting from Arsenal’s resources and expertise. We look forward to supporting and building the business organically and with strategic acquisitions that will further expand its network.”


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Groundbreaking ceremony for new organics production facility

In March 2012, Evonik Industries broke ground to mark the official start of the construction of a new organics production facility in Shanghai (China), an upper-two-digit-million-euro investment. The ceremony was attended by more than 200 guests including govern-ment officials, regional and global contacts of Evonik’s key customers,

strategic partners, as well as management and employees of the company.

The detail engineering of the new organics production facility is already completed and the plant is expected to be operational in 2013. It will supply innovative ingredients and specialty surfactants based on renewable raw materials for the personal care, household care, and industrial specialties industry. It will primarily serve markets in China and Asia Pacific, with an annual capacity of 80 kt. The new produc-tion plant will be built on a 33,000 sqm plot of land at Evonik’s Multi-User Site China (MUSC) in Shanghai Chemical Industry Park (SCIP). It is conveniently located in the Yangtze River Delta Economic Zone.

Evonik’s new organics production facility is also setting environ-mental standards. MUSC, a wholly-owned Evonik site, follows all Shanghai, China and Evonik standards and laws. In addition, the site is regularly audited and certified (ISO 9001, 14001 and OSHA 18001). Evonik will implement state-of-the-art environmental protection meas ures, such as sophisticated air pollution and waste treatment controls and two-step waste water treatment.

Parallel to the construction of the new production plant, Evonik is expanding its R&D center at its Xinzhuang site in Shanghai, with an investment of € 23 million. The expansion includes state-of-the-art laboratories for research and development, application technol-ogy, and technical service, with aims to develop product applications and provide technology service for customers throughout China and Asia Pacific.

Biogas upgrading: new plant for hollow fiber membrane modules

Evonik Industries is investing an upper-single-digit-million-euro amount in a plant produc ing SEPURAN® hollow fiber membrane mod ules at its Schörfling (Austria) site. In particular, the novel membrane technology facilitates the energy-efficient upgrading of biogas to bio-methane. Biomethane is fed into the public natural gas grid. The new hollow fibre spin-ning plant will come on-stream within 2012 to meet the grow ing demand on the biogas market.

“With this investment, we’re systemati-cally strengthening our activities in the area of gas separation membranes, proving our commitment to renewable energies by pro-ducing biomethane that can be fed directly into the grid,” said Dr. Axel Kobus, head of the growth segment Fibers & Membranes. “In contrast to other processes, our membrane tech nology needs no auxiliary chemicals; nor does it generate any solid wastes or effluents that would need to be disposed of.” The Evonik process is offered on the market by leading plant engineering and construction partners, and works cost-effectively, even in relatively small plants. It is therefore particularly suit-able for the local energy supply of tomorrow.

The novel technology is based on mem-branes produced from high-performance

significantly distinguishes the Evonik method from the technologies currently available on the market.

At present, biogas is still largely convert-ed to electricity at its production site, with a maximum of 40 percent of its energy being utilized by the conversion to power. In such local power generation the waste heat often remains largely unused. When fed into the natural gas grid, however, the raw material can be stored much more efficiently, and more than 90 percent of its energy utilized as power and heat.

polymers that in the past have been, for example, processed into fibers and used in hot-gas filtration. At pressures of up to 25 bar, such membranes allow significantly improved separation of carbon dioxide and methane with stable selectivity, in a single process step. The method yields methane of purity higher than 99 percent. Neither energy-intensive recycle streams nor costly down-stream processing steps are required, which

Hollow fiber membrane module for the upgrading of biogas to biomethane


23neWs

evonik invests in High-tech Gründerfonds II

Evonik Industries has invested €2.5 million in High-Tech Gründerfonds II, expanding the number of industry investors to 13 corpora-tions. In 2011 Evonik invested €365 million into research and development projects and is continuing its innovation strategy with its involvement in the fund. High-Tech Grün-derfonds II began in October 2011 with a volume of €288.5 million in the first closing.It is able to provide seed financing of up to €500,000 of venture capital to innovative technology companies and reserve another €1.5 million per company for follow-up rounds.

“The goal is to provide early financing for technologies, to create lasting value in the companies and to develop them in order to make them commercially viable. Overall, we have already been able to finance over 260 companies since the start of Gründerfonds I in 2005. These start-ups have succeeded in arranging approx. €400 million of additional venture capital subsequent to our invest-ments,” says Dr. Michael Brandkamp, Man-a ging Director of High-Tech Gründerfonds.He adds, “With the involvement of Evonik we have not only been able to increase the second fund to €291 million, but would also like to significantly increase the number of start-ups in the chemicals sector in Germany.”

“Evonik Industries fosters a distinctive innovation culture. With our innovations we want to maintain our technology competence

should send a clear signal to universities and institutes of higher learning with a knack for spin-offs, as well as research facilities in the chemicals sector and related disciplines. “We want to motivate young scientists in the field of chemistry and related areas, which can also be engineering sciences, to start companies and to provide them with the necessary net-works and contacts, in addition to starting capital,” says Michael Brandkamp, explaining the strong presence of the chemicals industry in the group of investors.

Proximity to corporations has many advan tages. In addition to customer-supplier relationships opened up between small and large companies, the facilities or distribution channels of the industry may possibly also be used by start-ups. The industry benefits from trends, innovations, and completely new, cut-ting-edge business models.

High-Tech Gründerfonds invests in young, high potential high-tech start-ups. The seed financing provided is designed to enable start-ups to take an idea through pro-totyping and to market launch. Investors in this public/private partnership include the Federal Ministry of Economics and Tech nol-ogy, the KfW Banking Group, as well as thir-teen industrial groups. High-Tech Gründer-fonds has about €563 million under manage-ment in two funds (€272 million High-Tech Gründerfonds I, €291 million High-Tech Gründerfonds II).

in the long-term and continue to expand it,” explains Dr. Bernhard Mohr, Head of Cor po-rate Venturing at Evonik. “Our involvement in High-Tech Gründerfonds II is another part of this strategy of investing in innovations and providing assistance to promising young start-ups in the chemicals sector and related dis-ciplines.”

Following Altana and BASF, Evonik is the third company from the chemicals sector to invest in High-Tech Gründerfonds II. This

Groundbreaking ceremony for new hydrogen peroxide plant in China

An official ceremony was held at the end of April 2012 to mark the groundbreaking for Evonik’s new hydrogen peroxide plant in China. The plant is scheduled to go online, with a planned annual production capacity of 230,000 metric tons, at the end of 2013, thus increasing Evonik’s current overall annual ca-pacity of around 600,000 metric tons of H2O2 production by nearly 40 percent.

Evonik Industries recently founded Evonik Specialty Chemicals (Jilin) Co., Ltd. (ESCJ) to run the new production facility. Evonik will supply its H2O2 from Jilin directly to the adja-cent propylene oxide plant run by Jishen Chemical Industry Co., Ltd. via a pipeline that will link the two facilities. A long-term sup-ply agreement is in place between these com-panies. Jishen will use the so-called HPPO

The HPPO plant in China that will use the Evonik-Uhde technique will be the second of its kind. The first-ever large-scale HPPO operation anywhere in the world was jointly established by Evonik, ThyssenKrupp Uhde, and a Korean chemicals company (the licen-see) in Ulsan (Korea) in 2008.

Hydrogen peroxide has previously been used mostly as a bleaching agent in the textile and pulp industry. The new HPPO process now makes it possible for this environmen-tally friendly oxidant to also be used in the chemical direct synthesis of propylene oxide. The advantages of the HPPO process are that it requires significantly less investment, that it enables a high degree of production effi-ciency, and that it is an extremely eco-friend-ly process.

process to make propylene oxide from the hydrogen peroxide. Propylene oxide is used chiefly in the manufacturing of polyurethane intermediates. The polyurethanes then go into making things like upholstery for car seats or furniture. The HPPO process was developed by Evonik in collaboration with ThyssenKrupp Uhde GmbH.

“Our investment in Jilin,” explains Jan Van den Bergh, the head of Evonik’s Advanced Intermediates Business Unit, “is an excellent example of our strategy to develop innova-tive technology to access new sales markets for hydrogen peroxide. This move is also part of a growth strategy that sees us making tar-geted investments in Asia and that will help us to achieve growth in that region.”


24 CAtALYsIs

Owing to their complex composition, heterogeneous catalysts cannot always be characterized entirely—something that can lead to unpleasant surprises when the production formulation is transferred to the com-mercial scale. With profiling, the experts of Evonik’s Catalysts Business Line have developed a method that visually illustrates the influence of the formulation on the catalytic properties. Profiling not only simplifies scale-up but also allows the customer to sample more efficiently.

[ text Dr. Dorit Wolf ]

Profiling simplifies scale-up in PMPC production

New tool for characterizing catalysts


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it Remains a challenge for catalysis experts to com-pletely characterize a solid catalyst. Due to the com-plexity of these catalysts, they do not form a uniform phase, but display various polymorphic solid phases at once, which are also not defined at the molecular level. As a result, many physical and chemical prop-erties are subject to broad distribution. Good exam-ples include the particle sizes of the carrier materi-als, the size of the metal particles on the carriers, the acidity or basicity of surface centers, or even the ox-idation conditions of the active transition metal com-ponents.

It becomes even more complicated when the con-ditions on the edges of the distribution functions in-fluence the catalytic properties. With their content being so infinitesimally small, it is difficult or impos-sible to use physicochemical methods to identify and quantify them.

As a catalyst producer, however, Evonik must en-sure the consistent quality and performance of its products. In addition to the standard methods of phy-sicochemical characterization, such as determining particle sizes, elementary analysis, determining pore

volumes, and pore radius distribution, the company now has a method of evaluating the catalyst: Profil-ing. This tool, developed in-house, reliably indicates the extent to which changes in the manufacturing process influence the catalytic properties.

The method is based on testing precious metal powder catalysts (PMPC) in different catalytic reac-tions that represent the key fields of application: Hydrogenation of CC double and CC triple bonds, of CO and CN groups, and of aromatic nitro groups. It also factors the hydrogenation of substrates that simultaneously display different hydrogenizable functional groups. The various reactions test the catalysts’ activity and selectivity—the actual per-formance features described in the property profile of each catalyst (see Fig. 1).

The profiles differ greatly, depending on the com-position of the catalyst— the type of precious metal, the precious metal loading, and the carrier type—

Figure 1Property profile of catalysts: Profiling illustrates the performance features “activity” and “selectivity” in various test reactions

Catalyst 001 Catalyst 002 Catalyst 003

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26 CAtALYsIs

Figure 2Diagrams of the production formulae to the left, catalyst performance profiles to the right. evonik’s new method shows which production parameters influence catalyst performance, and whether any still require fine-tuning

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reactions and substrates for the various catalyst types from the profiles.

In other words, it allows fast identification of the types of reactions or substrates that will make a cer-tain catalyst in the Evonik portfolio display particu-larly high activity and selectivity and, on the other hand, which substrates will make the catalyst less active or selective. By this method, customers can obtain a sample optimally designed for their specific application.

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but also on the manufacturing formula. To put it differently: The catalytic performance profiles are a type of unique fingerprint for each type of catalyst.

Evonik uses profiling in the development of new catalysts when laboratory formulas have to be trans-ferred to the commercial scale. With the new method, they can analyze whether the properties lend them-selves to reproduction, and whether the catalysts pro-duced perform as well as the laboratory models.

Figure 2 demonstrates that profiling is well suited to this purpose. It not only shows whether the cata-lyst formula could be successfully transferred from the laboratory to the production scale but also which production parameters determine catalyst perfor-mance and whether they might still require fine- tuning. Profiling therefore allows selective improve-ment in the robustness of the catalyst production process, and it also assists quality assurance.

Figure 3 shows various profiles of the catalysts of Evonik’s PMPC portfolio. All of these are five percent Pd catalysts, with activated carbon as the carrier. The only difference in these catalysts is the way they were produced. In the end, they all have the same quanti-tative composition. The figure shows how extremely sensitive the performance profiles are to the param-eters of catalyst production. This makes profiling a useful tool not only for scaling up catalysts: The method also makes it possible to derive preferred

Pd dr. dorit Wolf has been R&D group leader in Evonik’s Catalysts Business Line since 2004. She studied chemistry at the University of Leipzig, where she earned her doctorate in 1991. In 1997, Wolf quali-fied as a university lecturer in chemical technology at the Chair for Chemical Technology at Ruhr University in Bochum. She subsequently accepted a position as director of the Reaction Technology Working Group at the Institute for Applied Chemistry Berlin-Adlershof. In 2001 she moved to Evonik to direct the Hetero ge-neous Catalysis Group in the Catalysis Project House.+49 6181 59-8746, [email protected]

Figure 3Performance profiles of various prepared PMPC catalysts (5 % Pd/C) from evonik. these profiles allow conclusions to be drawn regarding the preferred reactions and substrates of the particular catalyst types

More robust production processes


28 MedICAL teCHnoLoGY

Whether it is spinal disc problems or certain diseases of the gastrointestinal tract, dental technology or cardiac pacemakers: For many health concerns, implants are the method of choice for restoring a patient’s quality of life. As an implant material, polyetheretherketone has established a firm position in a market defined not by large piece counts, but by custom-designed individual solutions. Evonik has met this challenge with VESTAKEEP® PEEK.

[ text Marc Knebel ]

Implants made from PEEK ensure new quality in medicine

Cranial-Maxillo-Facial

Dental

Orthopedics

Cardiovascular

Spine

Fields of application for implants made from PeeK polymers


29MedICAL teCHnoLoGY

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Patients Who suffeR from stomach or intestinal tumors can experience constriction of the digestive tract—a condition called stenosis, which prevents food from passing through. In these cases, a stent—an elas-tic, tube-shaped, self-expanding wire mesh that unfolds following placement in the esophagus or the affected section of the intestine—reopens the path-way for food. The stent does not cure the patient’s disease, but it does alleviate suffering and improves the patient’s quality of life.

Traditionally produced from polyamide or poly-ester, stents can now be made from Evonik’s poly-etheretherketone (PEEK) VESTAKEEP® as well. The material boasts not only excellent biocompatibility, which Evonik has verified in numerous tests by external testing institutes, but also high biostability. The latter is a direct result of the aromatic, partially crystalline properties of the PEEK polymer, which not only imparts outstanding resistance to corrosion, hydrolysis, and chemicals but also renders it inert to bodily liquids—the material retains its stability, even under aggressive conditions.

The stents are one of the new medical applications Evonik has opened up with VESTAKEEP®. The fact that EPT—Evonik Polymer Technology GmbH, which manufactures PEEK semi-finished products—is certi-

fied to EN ISO 13485:2003 simplifies marketing of the material. This certification makes it easier for the producers of medical products to qualify as suppliers, and ensures specific medical standards of care and traceability are met. This completes a key hurdle in advancing new applications.

In addition to its biostability and biocompatibility (see also elements34, p. 30 ff), the advantages of VESTAKEEP® include its outstanding mechanical properties, such as high dimensional stability based on low water intake, high stiffness at low weight, high resistance to heat distortion, and a long-term service temperature of 260 °C. This high-performance plas-tic is also easy to work into versatile shapes—an argu-ment not only for the filigree construction of stents but also for use as an extremely thin-walled battery housing in cardiac pacemakers, in dental technology, or as an implant pump for patients who, for instance, suffer from excess fluid in the abdomen as a result of liver disease.

evonik produces veStAKeeP® in a Class 10000 clean room, which commenced operation in April 2011

Synthesis of PeeK. the aromatic, partially crystalline properties of the PeeK polymer make it highly resistant to chemicals and bodily fluids

Orthopedics: A growing field of applications

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Historical areas of application for high-perfor-mance PEEK have been spinal implants, with a grow-ing interest in orthopedic devices and recently accepted applications such as mouth, jaw, and skull implants. For spine surgery, in the case of herniated discs it can be advisable to remove the intervertebral disc and replace it with a prosthesis called a “spine cage.” Because the cage is supposed to create a bony connection between the neighboring vertebrae, it has a central cavity that can be filled with calcium phos-phate or the patient’s own bone material. Anatomi-cally shaped, it also has a toothed surface for high “primary stability”—the stability achieved solely through the clamping effect of the implant in the bones.

While cage implants are machined from a higher volume, off-the-shelf design, cranial implants have moved to a more custom design for each patient. They are used in patients with extensive skull defects to protect the delicate brain—whether it is a congenital malformation or the result of an accident or sickness. To this end, a 3D X-ray scan is used to reconstruct the exact three-dimensional anatomy of the surface of the skull on a computer. The implant is then adapted to this form and produced from a block of PEEK using CNC milling technology.

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Compared to the long-established implant materials titanium and cobalt-chromium, PEEK offers a variety of advantages in orthopedics. The plastic scores points in terms of ductility, elongation at break, and fatigue resistance—blows or shocks to the implant are effectively absorbed. From a patient perspective they appreciate the extremely low thermal conductivity: Cranial plates made of titanium, which have excellent heat conductivity, can cause pain when temperatures fluctuate dramatically in the environment around them—for example, when the patient leaves a well-heated house to go outdoors in winter.

VESTAKEEP® is also X-ray transparent and there-fore invisible in computer tomography and magnetic resonance imaging, which allows easy monitoring of bone growth and structure during the healing pro-cess. Titanium and cobalt-chromium, on the other hand, are opaque to X-rays and generate artifacts that make it difficult to analyze the image.

There are sometimes cases in which the physician wants to see the implant—he may, for example, check

Spine cage made of veStAKeeP® PeeK as a placeholder for the space between the vertebrae, which recreates the natural height of the intervertebral disc segment

As an added service, evonik also offers customers CAe (computer-aided engineering). these simulations provide information on how much stress an implant receives and how it should be constructed

X-ray image of 2-mm-thick veStAKeeP® platelets that were layered in stacks of varying heights. the absorption of the X-ray light increases as the thickness of the layers increases (from bottom to top). At the same time, it is possible to control the absorption by varying the content of the barium sulfate

A protective shield for the skull



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the primary stability of a spine cage to make sure it is properly seated, and whether the bones are actu-ally growing through it. This is why tantalum pins are used in PEEK cages to make the implant visible. How-ever, incorporating the pins is a pretty tedious, labor-intensive post-processing step because they have to be seated perfectly flush—the cavities around the pins could cause problems during cleaning and steriliza-tion.

For such cases, Evonik has developed a new VESTAKEEP® PEEK variant that contains barium sul-fate. The idea comes from diagnostic radiology: Phy-sicians give patients a suspension made of barium sulfate to display the esophagus, stomach and small and large intestines, as well as mobility disorders of these organs, in a CT image. Decades of experience have proven the safety of using barium sulfate.

Studies by Evonik have shown that a content of less than ten percent barium sulfate is enough to make the implant visible on an X-ray, without generating the kinds of disruptive artifacts caused by metals. While the quality of the X-ray depends on a number of factors—such as the strength of the X-ray radiation and geometry, and the wall thickness of the implant—a filling level of six percent barium sulfate is well-suited to a majority of applications. For example, a spine cage can be portrayed clearly in an X-ray im-age, and at the same time allows the monitoring of bone growth in the cavity.

Osteointegration—the healing process in the bones in which the bone cells graft to the implant and im-plant surface, which normally takes about six to twelve months—is essential for a stable fit for an im-plant in the spinal column. The factors that influence osteointegration are the individual properties of the bone, the construction of the implant, and its surface condition. With regard to the latter, titanium is superior to PEEK, because the metal surface shows improved grafting behavior, and the bone substance anchors faster to the metal. Consequently, the

On the computer, 3D X-ray scans are used to reconstruct the exact three-dimensional anatomy of the skull. this is done for the purpose of manufacturing skull implants, where the implant is adapted to this form. CnC milling technology is used to make the implant from one block of PeeK

In permanent bending tests, veStAKeeP® holds up three times as long as a comparable competing PeeK product

veStAKeeP® Ultimate Standard PeeK polymer

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Visible thanks to barium sulfate



InteRVIeW

Dr. Markus Braun has two jobs: He is attending physician at the Klinikum Westfalen in Dortmund and team doctor at Borussia Dortmund football club. A specialist in sports medi-cine, Braun knows a great deal—about premature signs of exhaustion, fast healing processes, and the question of the right implant material.

You’ll be standing on the sidelines again next weekend, Dr. Braun: As a fan or a concerned physician?

Braun: All of the above! My first responsibility is as a physi-cian, but you automatically become a fan. When you spend that much time with the players, you develop a personal relationship beyond the normal doctor-patient relationship.

How much time do you actually spend with the players?

Braun: In any given week I spend a couple of hours on the training ground almost every evening. And I go to every game on the weekend. This time we go to Berlin: We’ll be traveling from Friday afternoon to Saturday evening. Then, it’s right back to training Sunday morning.Editor’s note: Dr. Braun also had his work cut out for him this weekend. In the win over Hertha BSC, Lukasz Piszczek suffered a concussion and contusion of the skull when he collided with another player.

everyone knows that professional athletes are especially prone to injury. what long-term impact does this kind of permanent stress have on the body?

Braun: Signs of exhaustion are often the first to appear. By age 40 or 45, osteoarthritis is not unusual. Top athletes are also frequent candidates for implants.

what criteria are crucial to the optimal implant?

Braun: Naturally, it would be best to completely forego the use of foreign material. This is not always possible, however. When foreign material has to be used, the mate-rial properties are crucial: Biocompatibility is the first consideration. Of course, the material must be as durable as possible to prevent the need for a second operation. Wear resistance and the right amount of elasticity are crucial to stability. If these properties are not what they should be, the implant can cause problems later.

what materials do you work with?

Braun: There is a trend in medicine toward minimally invasive surgery and away from large-scale operations. Minimally invasive surgery makes only small incisions and is controlled by imaging methods such as CT or MRT. In the case of CT, small steel needles are used, and in MRT, amagnetic materials such as carbon fibers or titanium.

Many materials are well known to generate artifacts on the screen. How do you handle that?

Braun: Artifacts on the image are a disaster! For me, they are a real problem, particularly with the equipment. Braun shows a CT scan from a spinal column cementing pro-cedure. The area around the bone punch cannula is obscured by the white of the artifacts. Without this buildup of arti-facts, I could work with greater precision.

the material PeeK doesn’t leave artifacts.

Braun: That is, in fact, an interesting feature of my work. To get that kind of information, I usually have to do my own research or trust the claims of the implant manufacturers. Right now, there is no direct exchange between doctors and material manufacturers. And these are the experts who ultimately have to convert my requirements into concrete technical data.

“Material artifacts diminish the image quality”



InteRVIeW

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Marc Knebel is Business Manager of VESTAKEEP® Medical in Evonik’s High Performance Polymers Business Line.+49 2365 49-6783, [email protected]

333spinal segment that received the implant stabilizes

more quickly and is also able to take stress faster.On the other hand, with an E-modulus of 3.3 Giga-

pascal the elasticity of PEEK roughly corresponds to that of a bone. This allows an optimal transmission of force between the implant material and the natural bone, which can in turn have a positive effect on bone healing.

Both advantages can be combined by coating the PEEK implant, which improves the grafting behavior of bone cells on PEEK. Common coating materials are hydroxylapatite, calcium phosphate, titanium, or a special nano-coating. Depending on the material, they are applied by vacuum plasma spraying, chemical treatment, or physical vapor deposition.

Evonik is currently working on a number of for-mulas in cooperation with various companies that specialize in coating medical products. The current results are quite promising, as tests by an indepen-dent accredited testing laboratory show: VESTA-KEEP® PEEK substrates, for example, demonstrate exceptionally high tensile and shear strength—the coatings adhere extremely well—and meet the re-quirements of the FDA on these points.

The potential of PEEK polymers, however, is far from being exhausted. To increase the rigidity of the material even further, Evonik is working on a variant strengthened with carbon fibers (CF). Potential applications are plates and screws in the trauma segment used by surgeons to stabilize broken or fractured bones. The advantage lies in the fact that patients receive a metal-free solution, which helps those with allergic reactions to metal ions. Patients can also undergo MRI examinations later on, which is not possible with metal implants. Beyond this, Evonik has even more development plans for promot-ing the use of VESTAKEEP® PEEK as a metal sub-stitute in the body and more reports will follow as VESTAKEEP® accomplishes these technologies.

You are an expert in healing processes. It’s incredible some-times how fast professional soccer players recover even from serious injuries: what’s the magic behind that?

Braun: (laughs) No magic! Essentially, there are three simple reasons for that: First, the patients are young and in top condition. This is why the body responds well to treatments and therapies. Second, the players have access to their own physical therapists, who create an optimal environment that allows the natural healing processes to run their course without interference. And third: The players go to rehab far more for the optimal stimulation therapy under the direction of skilled rehab trainers.

who decides whether a player is fit enough to play again?

Braun: That’s an interdisciplinary decision between the physical therapists, rehab trainers, and the doctor. To some extent, the player is responsible. Everyone tries for the fastest possible recovery time.

Do you ever just have to say “no”?

Braun: That happens sometimes. The players always want to get back on the field by the next game. At that moment, they’re just highly motivated employees. We doctors have to act as a brake if the risk to their health is too great.

dr. Markus Braun, 45, is a trained medical specialist in orthopedics, and has worked as the team doctor for first-division German soccer team Borussia Dort-mund since 2003. Previously, he spent five years as the team doctor for Rot-Weiß Essen. In his full-time career, Braun has held various positions at clinics in Duis-burg, Essen, and Bochum. Since mid-2011, he has worked as attending physician at the newly established sports medicine department at Klinikum Westfalen (Dortmund). His specialty is minimally invasive surgery using imaging methods.


34 neWs

Lightweight design solutions for China automotive industry

The all-new electric car prototype was in the spotlight at the Shanghai International Indus-try Fair on Shanghai Motor’s booth, underscor- ing the benefits of lightweight design solutions from Evonik Industries. The new-energy vehicle is powered by a lithium-ion bat tery.

The car uses several lightweight materials from Evonik for various applications to sup-port reduced energy consumption and lower emissions, such as PLEXIGLAS® material for the side screens, rear window, and rear lamp, as well as ROHACELL® rigid core material and an epoxy resin formulation based on VESTA MIN® hardener technology for the engine hood. “We are proud to have played a part in providing Shanghai Motor’s first electric car with our lightweight and environ-mentally progressive plastic solutions,” said Xu Hang, Project Head of Lightweight Design in China.

low densities, even small thicknesses of ROHACELL® enable the construction of light-weight body parts with extreme stiffness.

To support high output production of composite body parts, a new epoxy resin for-mulation based on VESTA MIN® hardener technology was used in the resin infusion manufacturing process. Short cycle times can be realized to allow mass production.

Shanghai Motor’s first electric car

The use of Evonik’s PLEXIGLAS®—a coated PMMA to replace traditional mineral glass—in the demo car reduces the weight of the fixed side screens up to 40–50 percent. It also helps to reduce energy consumption and CO2 emissions. The advantages of PLEXIGLAS® glazing include UV stability and good acoustic properties, which means added value for the vehicle as a whole. In addition, the car desi-gner can achieve more design freedom with this material and gain sophisticated curve structure which is not feasible by using tradi-tional mineral glass. The special grade of PLEXIGLAS® material is also applied at the rear lamps to achieve a special light diffusing effect.

The engine hood uses the structural foam ROHACELL® developed by Evonik. This ma -terial is used as core in sandwich structures. Compared to a steel engine hood, the sand-wich version reduces weight by up to 70 per-cent. Due to the outstanding heat resistance and remarkable mechanical strength of ROHACELL® material, it can shorten curing cycles at elevated temperatures above 130 °C and offers a cost-efficient production. Because of its high mechanical strength at

the first-ever electrical sports car with a weight below 1,000 kg

The performance data of the lightweight electrical sports car Elise-E that Evonik Industries presented at the Car Symposium in Bochum are impressive: The vehicle weighs 950 kg, has a power of 150 kW, ac-celerates from 0 to 100 km/h in 4.4 seconds. The top speed is limited to 200 km/h. The purpose of exhibiting the vehicle was to show

the automotive industry what can be achie-ved with Evonik’s expertise in chemicals. Thanks to the combined use of innovative storage technology, lightweight components, and tires with reduced rolling resistance, the sports car is the first-ever model to weigh less than 1,000 kilograms. With the exhibit, Evonik is demonstrating that electrical cars,

the lightweight electrical sports car elise-e

which are currently used primarily as city ve-hicles, can also be part of the sports car seg-ment.

The vehicle is a combination of automo-tive components made with the specialty chemical components of Evonik and the sophisticated automotive technology of the British sports car manufacturer Lotus. The necessary power comes from a lithium-ion battery with the globally unique CERIO® storage technology. At the core of this bat-tery is the ceramic high-performance separa-tor SEPARION®, which is extremely thin and highly heat-resistant. It separates the anode reliably from the cathode and sets new stan-dards for lithium-ion cells in terms of cycle stability, performance output, and safety by using additional components. In addition, the separator allows for the highly compact design of the battery cells, which results in high energy density at a low weight.

The weight of the electrical sports car’s body has also been reduced with Evonik tech-


35neWs

veStAMID® Htplus in mass-produced gearshift levers

The high-performance polymer VESTAMID® HTplus is making gearshift levers lighter. A leading automotive OEM in Europe is now using Evonik polyphthalamides (PPA) in the serial production of a gearshift lever part. The Turkish company Eurotec AS has compoun-ded the high-performance polymer specifi-cally for this purpose.

“Our decision in favor of VESTAMID® HTplus M1000 was based on the good pro-cessing characteristics and the outstanding mechanical properties of the material,” says Reha Gür, commercial director at Eurotec. “This allowed us to offer the OEM a custom-ized product based on their future expecta-tions that not only weighs less, but is also more economical than a previous solution and bringing fast production possibilities with environmentally friendly behavior.”

The original gearshift lever component had been made of metal. Because of the spe-cial property profile of PPA, Eurotec switched its production to the high-perfor-mance polymer. Other arguments in favor of using PPA included high resistance to

lubricants and oils that are typically present in clutch systems.

In addition to high chemical resistance, molded parts made from VESTAMID® HTplus offer high dimensional stability and excellent mechanical properties such as rigidity and tensile strength. The high-performance poly-mer is therefore ideally suited for use in con-ventional metal applications.

nologies. The sandwich structure with the structural foam ROHACELL® and carbon fibers makes the body 60–70 percent lighter than a comparable steel structure. Evonik applied a new resin infusion process with an innovative epoxy resin formula based on the VESTAMIN® hardener technology to manu-facture it. This process allows for class-A sur-

faces and reliable quality in the serial manu-facture of composite automotive body parts. Side windows made of PLEXIGLAS® also contributed to the weight reduction, as they have a weight-saving potential of 40–50 per-cent compared to conventional mineral glass.

Vehicles with less weight and high power have to be safe and sustainable on the road.

In this fast-running electrical vehicle, this is ensured by special lightweight tires, which were developed with high-performance Silica ULTRASIL® and the silane Si 363® man-ufactured by Evonik. They reduce the rolling resistance of the tires by approx. 20 percent, leading to energy savings of about five per-cent.

veStAMID® Htplus makes the gearshift lever component resistant to lubricants

High-performance plastics: Certified bio-based

The VESTAMID® Terra family of polyamides from Evonik Industries has been certified as “bio-based” by independent institutes. The bio-based components have been certified according to DIN ISO 10694, 1996-08, and by the USDA’s Biopreferred® program. These official laboratories used C14 trace carbon analytics to verify that the carbon in these prod ucts originates not from petroleum, but biomass instead.

The polymers are partially or entirely based on renewable feedstocks. The starting material is the castor bean (Ricinus communis) and its oil derivates, which are synthesized into monomers that form the basis of the

polyamides. At present, three Terra products are available: VESTAMID® Terra HS is based on polyamide 610, which is the polyconden-sation product of 1,6-hexamethylene diamine (H) and 1,10-decanedoic diacid (sebacic acid – S). Sebacic acid is derived from castor oil, making Terra HS a 63 percent bio-content polymer. VESTAMID® Terra DS is based on polyamide 1010, which is the polycondensa-tion product of 1,10-decamethylene diamine (D) and 1,10-decanedoic diacid. Both deca-methylene diamine and sebacic acid are derived from castor oil, making Terra DS a 100 percent bio-content polymer. The 45 percent bio-content polymer VESTAMID® Terra DD

is based on polyamide 1012, which is the polycondensation product of 1,10-decameth-ylene diamine (D) and 1,12-dodecanedoic diacid (D).

“The bio-based polyamides prove that outstanding performance and responsible sourc ing are not mutually exclusive,” says Ben-jamin Brehmer, business manager for biopoly-mers. “We impart precisely those properties to our materials which the market expects from high-performance plastics.” Thanks to their excellent chemical resistance, low water absorption, and good dimensional stability, the polyamides are suitable for a vast number of applications and processing techniques.


36 InnoVAtIon MAnAGeMent

In the Coatings & Additives Business Unit, the New Business Development Functional Unit generates additional, sustainable business beyond the existing business areas.

Identifying and developing new markets


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theRe Was a time when innovation was driven purely by technology. In those days, advancements in the broad R&D subject areas had a direct impact on a company’s business activities. Today, this putative causal chain from technological innovation to entre-preneurial success is not exactly broken, but it has become increasingly difficult for companies to con-tinue growing in established markets based on indi-vidual technological innovations or an inventor’s flash of genius. “Now, innovations are often created by de-velopers splicing together existing technologies, and thus offering new applications to satisfy market de-mands that have existed for a relatively short time,” says Dr. Stephan Fengler, Vice President of the New Business Development Functional Unit in the Coat-ings & Additives Business Unit at Evonik Industries.

Such products as electronic devices with touch-sensitive screens have created new needs that can be met by coatings. Before Apple’s iPhone became a smashing success, such devices existed only in cer-tain niche markets. A growing number of users reg-ularly use their smartphone now to send e-mail, man-age appointments, shop online, and download apps, so scratches, reflections, and fingerprints on touch screens are unwelcome on an application associated in this way with design and lifestyle. Since it is a com-mon problem, producers of smartphones and tablet PCs have suddenly become interested in finding an inexpensive, functional coating for the glossy dis-plays.

The example of the touch screen reveals how embed-ded future innovations can be: Innovations outside the core activities of Coatings & Additives that could mean real additional business for Evonik. Identifying and promoting this growth potential is the work of New Business Development, which is headed by Fen-gler and located in Darmstadt and Marl. “We explore what kinds of needs new technologies are creating on the market.”

So the task of New Business Development, in as-sociation with the business unit’s Innovation Man-agement unit, is not to figure out how to generate additional sales with individual products from the business lines, but to adopt a mindset that goes be-yond business lines and is firmly rooted in innovation.

Left: One rapidly growing market that Coatings & Additives is working on in the new Business Develop-ment Functional Unit is additive manufacturing. this allows the layered construction of complex 3D structures and com-ponents that are not possible or prohibitively expensive to produce by other methods

right: How can we permanently protect the touch screens of tablet PCs and smart-phones against unsight-ly scratches or finger-prints? How do we achieve a refined sur-face reflection that also allows the screen to be read easily? In the new Business Develop-ment Functional Unit of the Coatings & Addi-tives Business Unit, evonik looks for inno-vative answers

New technologies generate new needs

Naturally, this kind of approach succeeds only if it is designed for the intermediate to long term. “It calls for new partnerships, new partners,” says Fengler. “And this is why it’s so hard to reconcile with day-to-day business.”

The New Business Development Functional Unit has been a part of Coatings & Additives since 2006. Over that time, its team has grown. But it has no lab-oratory of its own—instead, it works in close coop-eration with the business lines of the business unit. The team also stays in close contact with corporate R&D, which Evonik pools in its strategic development unit Creavis, and with other business units.

“New Business Development also seizes upon ideas outside the business lines and co-finances projects that, for example, are designed to run for several years and take on the kind of risk that a business line can’t assume by itself,” says Fengler. New Business Development, then, is by no means a kind of extended workbench of the business lines. Rather, it is a stra-tegically important component of Coatings & Addi-tives, which is investing considerable assets in the unit. The management team of the business unit man-ages its activities.

Coatings & Additives is at home in the world of the paints, coatings, and printing inks and in the ad-hesives and sealing compounds industries. The busi-ness unit also develops custom-made functional poly-mers for lubricant applications. These product groups include crosslinkers such as expoxide resin curing agents, and crosslinkers for powdered coatings,


38 InnoVAtIon MAnAGeMent

polymer-based coatings, and adhesive agents, as well as additives for coatings and lubricants. The employees of Coatings & Additives are active at 21 production sites and technology centers worldwide. In 2011, the business unit achieved annual sales of more than €1.7 billion.

For New Business Development, the most attrac-tive applications in the field of classical coatings are those that depend on a technology for their third function, behind color and protection. These func-

Nine employees work in the New Business Devel-opment Functional Unit at Coatings & Additives, in-cluding project managers and those involved with conceptualizing new ideas. These are chemists, phys-icists, and business managers, all of whom are com-municative and open to new ideas. “They are team players, who are able to establish networks across organizational boundaries,” says Fengler.

Different kinds of employees are sought for a job in New Business Development, including inventors, the technically minded, entrepreneurs, project man-agers, developers, and marketers. The inventor em-bodies high creativity and scientific curiosity. The technically minded are experts in certain technolo-gies and possess analytical skills. Willing to take risks, the entrepreneur contributes skills in networking and “selling” ideas. The “project manager” type stands out for leadership qualities and structured thought. The developer applies technical know-how and per-sistence. And finally, the “marketer” type contributes a broad-based understanding of the markets, as well as the ability to persuade customers.

These complementary abilities are necessary for the concrete work of opening up additional business. “Because vague ideas can’t produce results,” says Fen-gler. Even worse, various independent studies have shown that innovation projects involve a high level of risk, and, in the end, only a small percentage of ideas actually reach their goal. But because success is easier to sell than failure, New Business Develop-ment has to know how to handle this demoralizing reality. “We acknowledge it when employees take on risky projects whose outcome is impossible to gauge,”

333

New functionalities sought

when barnacles, mussels, bacteria, and fungi adhere to the hulls of ships, the results are expensive. Frictional resistance and fuel consumption increase, and the hulls have to be cleaned and repainted regularly. tin-based biocidal paints are banned, and even copper-based coatings have some environmental impact. Here, substitutes are being sought that protect the environment and have an exceptionally long service life

whether wind turbine, sailboat, or helicopter, the importance of composites for structural components is growing, because they combine low weight with high mechanical stability. Coatings & Additives investigates how the business unit’s expertise can be used to develop high-performance composites

tions can be self-cleaning or anti-fouling properties, but also heat-repelling, electrically conductive, or other properties. Often, they are based on nanostruc-turing that, combined with the polymer expertise of the business unit, produces thin functional layers.

“With functional coatings, the innovation and the new business activity doesn’t necessarily translate into large production volumes but into the value gen-erated by the user,” explains Fengler. This has a num-ber of advantages that limit the risk of a project. Coat-ings in the range of a few nanometers require only pilot-scale production facilities, so investment costs remain manageable. “For the business unit, then, this is a new way of thinking and working,” says Fengler. In the field of crosslinking technologies, the most attractive applications are in composites for light-weight construction.


39InnoVAtIon MAnAGeMent

says Fengler. “And we don’t allow projects to die as soon as we begin to encounter problems.”

Despite a culture that allows for mistakes, the projects of New Business Development are subject to strict project management. As a rule, a steering com-mit tee evaluates the progress and detailed plan of a project each quarter. Scenario projections, which are continuously updated, are a way to assess the poten-tial economic benefits of a project.

To generate ideas for new business, New Business Development uses the full range of tools of innova-tion management. “It’s really important to allow the team to come up with crazy ideas and find inspiration from outside the company,” says Fengler. External input can come from consultants, customer work-shops, or student teams that receive tricky problems to solve from Evonik through its networks. Not sur-prisingly, this also includes market analyses.

New Business Development is currently exploring crowdsourcing: The team is using Internet-based net-works of experts to clarify problems that cannot be solved based on existing know-how. “Oftentimes, this is a question of how experts assess the potential of a certain technology for a specific application,” explains Fengler.

For an idea in New Business Development to be-come a project, it must show sufficient business po-tential. “We then develop a vision of how to expand a market, and pour over this repeatedly as time goes on,” says Fengler. If the project steering committee approves it, employees first develop a concept and then follow up with one or more laboratory tests. New Business Development also involves colleagues

from relevant business lines at this stage, wherever possible. “Later on, if a business line is interested in taking on a project in its sphere of responsibility, it can do so,” explains Fengler. “Otherwise, we manage the projects all the way to market launch.”

New Business Development is currently managing about a dozen preliminary projects—projects that are in the evaluation and conception phase, and in which colleagues from the operative units of the business unit are already involved. At the same time, New Business Development is managing a few projects that already have significant development resources. “Some of these,” says Fengler, “will hopefully bear fruit over the next five to ten years.” 777

dr. stephan Fengler heads the New Business Development Functional Unit in Evonik’s Coatings & Additives Business Unit. After studying chemical engineering at the Mendeleyev University of Chemical Technology of Russia and earning his doctorate at the Technical University of Berlin in the Department of Polyme ri zation Technology, he began his career at Röhm GmbH in Darmstadt in 1995. Fengler held several positions in the Research, Production, and Marketing unit before assuming his current duties in 2011. +49 6151 18-4974, [email protected]

Each new idea is tested


40 desIGnInG WItH PoLYMeRs

The world’s museums house priceless works of art. New PLEXIGLAS® Optical HC put these exhibits in the best possible light, permanently protecting them from damage and depreciation.

YeaR afteR YeaR, millions of people flock to museums to mar-vel at the artifacts of past cultures or the works of contemporary artists: Drawings and paintings, sculptures and documents, historical garments, consumer items, and weapons. Few of these visitors are aware, though, that the professional protection of the exhibits is just as vital as their presentation. Indeed, Evonik is making a major contribution here. The company’s new PLEXIGLAS® Optical HC, with its abrasion-resistant coating, protects priceless exhibits against mechanical or chemical dam-age, prevents them from yellowing, presents them without any color distortion, and makes it possible to individually design dis-play cabinets, boxes, protective panels, and transport packaging.

One of the greatest challenges in exhibiting paintings, docu-ments, and art treasures is in achieving the optimal lighting. Ide-ally, structures, colors, and details should be seen undistorted, but the UV radiation in natural light often damages historical material. This causes sketches, watercolors, and garments to lose their original colors, pages of books to turn yellow and thin out, and canvases and other materials to become brittle.

no color distortionThis is why PLEXIGLAS® contains an integrated chemical UV filter that filters out damaging high-energy radiation. At the same time the material, with a transmission of 92 percent, is highly transparent in the visible region of the spectrum, allowing a clear and sharp view of the details and the structures of the exhibits with colors remaining true: The polymer avoids color distortion such as caused by, for example, the greenish tinge of float glass.

A large number of archives and museums have already dis-covered this amazing plastic for themselves. The U.S. National Archive transported seminal U.S. historical documents in cus-

tom-made PLEXIGLAS® display cases throughout the country for a traveling exhibition. The DeBeers Diamond Museum in Johannesburg, South Africa, displays historical documents in non-reflecting PLEXIGLAS®. In the Landtag (parliament) of the German state of Hesse, sketches by the architect Georg Moller were exhibited behind PLEXIGLAS® to mark the 150th anniver-sary of his death. The slight curve of the glazing showed off the sketches to best advantage.

But transmission and UV absorption are not the only require-ments for the professional protection of museum treasures. Vis-itors leave behind their tracks: Fingerprints, sweat, and abrasion due to zippers or handbags.

This is why the new PLEXIGLAS® Optical HC is equipped with a special surface coating, ensuring excellent resistance to mechanical impact and cleaning chemicals. This protects display cases and picture glazing against distracting chips and scratches, and the surface quality remains unchanged even with heavy wear. A comparison with uncoated acrylic shows that the coat-ing increases abrasion resistance by a factor of ten, and more than doubles the hardness.

well protected against chemical attackFingerprints and mechanical impact are unavoidable when visitors come close to exhibits. Targeted chemical attacks on artworks are risks of an entirely different dimension—but PLEXIGLAS® Optical HC offers effective protection even against these. Thanks to its surface coating, the material is resistant not only to abrasion but also to chemicals. This makes it easier for galleries and museums to meet their generally very stringent security requirements.

But protecting artworks does not begin in the museum or gallery. The art market is booming, and touring exhibitions give

Protective measures for treasures


41desIGnInG WItH PoLYMeRs

777

art lovers access to unique treasures almost all over the world. Light, yet break-resistant packaging is needed to transport them. Conventional float glass is heavy and breaks easily. Acrylic has a break resistance that is higher by a factor of eleven, and is only half as heavy. This offers key advantages for transport, and also in the presentation of large and heavy exhibits.

PLEXIGLAS® Optical HC can be produced in thicknesses of 1.5 to 16 millimeters, with variants individually adapted to customers’ wishes: Panels, for example, may be transparent or colored, and surfaces matted or antiglare. The material is

produced under clean-room conditions at a new combined extrusion and coating line at the Weiterstadt site, which came on-stream last year. Extruded PLEXIGLAS® panels are finished here with a specially developed coating that provides an abrasion- and chemical-resistant surface, with process, sub-strate, and coating being optimally coordinated.

Great design freedomLastly, the material offers customers and artists vast freedom of design: The material can be cut, drilled, sawed, rolled, scored and broken, laser processed, and digitally printed. This allows it to be used for shapes and artworks that cannot be realized in glass. Individual panels can be glued together. An adhesive developed especially for this purpose creates by chemical reac-tion a high-strength and virtually invisible bond. Moreover, PLEXIGLAS® Optical HC can be processed like standard PLEXIGLAS®. However, line bending and thermoforming are not suitable for machining abrasion-resistant coated PLEXIGLAS® Optical HC because these processes could lead to damage or de-tachment of the coating. The uncoated side of the panel, like extruded acrylic, forms a strong and reliable adhesive bond.

Its excellent mechanical and optical properties coupled with easy processability make abrasion-resistant PLEXIGLAS® Optical HC of interest for a wide range of applications. In addi-tion to the exhibiting and transporting of artworks, it is used in electronic displays, signage, furniture making, shopfitting, and exhibition booth construction, as well as for industrial glazing, for example to protect high-value machines and systems, and for sectional doors. To put it briefly, PLEXIGLAS® Optical HC prom-ises the optimal solution for all applications calling for the trans-parency and durability of glass combined with the lightness and break resistance of a plastic.

At an exhibition in Darmstadt, the gallery owner opted for PLeXIGLAS® Optical HC picture glazing to allow visitors to view the pictures without color distortion (above).For an exhibition of American historical documents that was toured through the country, the U.S. national Archive chose PLeXIGLAS® display cases because they offer protection and are highly transparent and lightweight (below)


42 neWs

Jason Chan (second from left), head of the raffinate facility, detailed Performance Intermediate’s inte-grated C4 operations

Student project presented in Marl

A group of students from the Technical Uni-versity Dortmund has created plans for a pro-duction plant for highly pure 1-butene at Marl Chemical Park. The students received support for their project assignment from Evonik’s Advanced Intermediates Business Unit’s Innovation Management.

Students taking the course in bio and chemical engineering at the TU Dortmund are required to take part in a group project assignment to conceptualize a specialty chem-icals plant. They have only six weeks to com-plete their assignment, which entails compos-ing the process-related design and defining the dimensions of a facility, with its columns, reactors, receptacles, heat exchangers, pumps, and compressors, as well as devising layouts, optimizing energy utilization at their facility, and doing the cost and economic-feasibility accounting.

It has become something of a tradition for the Innovation Management team at the

Advanced Intermediates Business Unit to put forward its proposal for the project to the university’s Technical Chemistry Chair, Prof. Arno Behr. This involvement adds to the prac-tical character of the assignment, while it also serves as a proverbial bridge between aca-demia and industry. What’s more, the col-laboration allows the students to subsequent-ly make the comparison between their fin-ished theoretical concept, as devised on the basis of information available to them from literary sources, with actual facilities operat-ing in practice at Marl Chemical Park.

In 2011 the Innovation Management team’s project proposal was for the concep-tualization of a facility for the manufacture of highly pure 1-butene. The Performance Inter-mediates Business Line runs an integrated C4 facility at the Marl site. Aside from butadi-enes, MTBE, isononanol, and diisononyl phthalate (DINP), a plasticizer, this, the only plant of its kind anywhere in the world, also

makes 1-butene. 1-butene is a key comono-mer used predominantly to make high-grade polyethylene and poly-1-butene.

The students executed their group assign-ment in the 2011/2012 winter semester. They then visited Marl Chemical Park for a guided tour by Jason Chan, head of the raffinate facil-ity, who detailed the integrated C4 opera-tions to them. This group of aspiring young academics proved to be particularly fascinated by the two 80- meter-high columns at the heart of 1-butene production.

The group was then invited to present its own concept to an audience comprising staff members from the business unit’s Production, Engineering, and Research teams and from Process Technology and Engineering. The students impressed this audience with the sound quality of their completed work. The discussion which followed addressed the dif-ferences apparent between the students’ con-cept and a real facility and also brought forth a number of tips concerning practical consid-erations. The participants all agreed that edu-cational elements of this kind on the student curriculum help to make studies more prac-tice-oriented as well as providing a platform for contact between industry and students. Thus, the scheme sees the Innovation Man-age ment unit making a valuable contribution to Evonik’s em ployer branding endeavors.

More than 400 offshore pipes with veStAMID® nrG

The molding compound has since been used commercially for the manufacture of flexible pipes. Specially developed VESTAMID® NRG combines its technical advantages with extraordinarily consistent product quality, which ensures outstanding processability and thus reduces setup times, scrap, and the risk of extrusion faults.

For decades now, Evonik has been a leader in the development and marketing of high-grade polyamide compounds for line systems in motor vehicles. This high degree of expertise in the development of extrusion compounds has now been carried over to molding compounds for the thick-walled pip-ing systems which, thanks to their advantag-es over existing systems, are increasingly coming into use in the oil and gas industries.

VESTAMID® NRG 1001, a high-performance polymer, can already be found in a total of over 800 kilometers of pipeline. The poly-amide 12 made by Evonik Industries has gone into the making of more than 400 unbonded flexible pipes to service the oil production industry. Oil companies have been using these pipes in their offshore projects for years now.

What has made the polyamide 12 molding compound so popular are its superior prop-erties over those of other polyamides used as barrier layers in flexible pipes. Together with Wellstream International Limited, Evonik conducted intensive testing to demonstrate compliance with the international norms API 17J for flexible risers and ISO 13628-2. The tests praised the creep performance, ductil-ity, thermal expansion, methanol compatibil-ity, and hydrolysis resistance.

Flexible: Offshore pipes with veStAMID® nrG

43neWs


Creavis starts with new BISOn project

University of Munich (Germany) and the S2B Center Biotechnology, the consortium will develop the microbial cell factory for a future generation of production processes that promise to be more sustain-able than the former process in the chemical in dustry. The German Federal Ministry of Edu cation and Research (BMBF) is funding the project, which will run for three years.

This project owes its success to the Car boxyFun project, which did well and was also funded by the BMBF. In the future, BISON will take the findings from Car boxyFun and transfer them to other biotechnologi-cal processes so that the microbial cell factory can become reality.

Biotechnological processes are gaining in popularity in the chem-ical industry. One of the reasons for this is that the biotech processes involve lower investment costs than chemical processes. This means, for example, that multi-level production stages can be mapped in a single bacterium cell–the microbial cell factory.

The Biotechnological Synthesis of Carbo xyamines and Carbo-xyalcohols Project, or “BISON” for short, was launched at the end of last year. Creavis Technologies & Inno va tion’s Science-to-Business Center (S2B) Bio technology is in charge of the project, the aim of which is to use biotechnology to modify molecules that could be used for polymer building blocks or fine chemicals in the future. Creavis is the strategic research and development unit of Evonik.

Both renewable and petroleum-based raw materials are used as starting materials in the BISON project. Customized microorganisms then convert and modify these materials to produce the desired end product. The actual modification of the molecules is done by selec-tive oxidation and amination–or what is also known as biotransfor-mation.

BISON involves experts from the fields of microbiology, protein engineering, and process development. Working with the Tech nical

Credits

PublisherEvonik Industries AGCorporate Innovation Strategy & Management

Rellinghauser Straße 1–1145128 EssenGermany

scientific Advisory BoardDr. Norbert FinkeCorporate Innovation Strategy & Management [email protected]

editor in ChiefDr. Karin Aßmann Evonik Services GmbHEditorial [email protected]

Contribution editorsChrista FriedlThomas LangeMichael Vogel

PhotosEvonik IndustriesKarsten BootmannDirk BannertMartin DanielsDieter DeboStefan WildhirtEurotec (p. 35)Wellstream (p. 42)Fotolia.com/Uwe Annas (p. 2, 11)Corbis/Imaginechina (p. 6)Fotolia.com/lunamarina (p. 38)Fotolia.com/mirpic (p. 38)Fotolia.com/Berni (p. 39)Fotolia.com/graham tomlin (p. 39)

design Michael Stahl, Munich (Germany)

Printed by Laupenmühlen Druck GmbH & Co. KG Bochum (Germany)

Reproduction only with permission of the editorial office

Evonik Industries is a worldwide manufacturer of PMMA products sold under the PLEXIGLAS® trademark on the European, Asian, African, and Australian continents and under the ACRYLITE® trademark in the Americas

A glance into a laboratory of the Creavis’ Science- to-Business Center Biotechnology in Marl

Achtung Lithozeile druckt nicht mit! Diese Datei ist ohne Überfüllungen angelegt! Farbton Offset-Druck 48c 100m14359 02-221 • Evonik WLYP Pharma Anzeige Englisch • Motiv Hütchenspieler • 4c • Format: 210 x 297 mm + 5 mm Beschnitt • 27.03.12 • mrGRUNDREINZEICHNUNG

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