Fraunhofer Research Institution for Materials Recycling and Resource Strategies IWKS

Prof. Dr. Armin Reller, co-founder and former scientific director of the Fraunhofer IWKS, was awarded the Cross of Merit on Ribbon of the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany. Congratulations to an outstanding scientist and pioneer of resource research from the Fraunhofer Institution for Material Cycles and Resource Strategy IWKS.

Together with the environmental consulting company envitec-k, the Fraunhofer Research Institution for Materials Recycling and Resource Strategies IWKS has started a new research project to develop a new type of collection system. The Automatic Waste Collecting & Pre-Sorting System (AWCPSS) aims to classify and sort waste directly in residential areas. The system analyses the contents of a discarded waste bag and reports the result directly to the user. This means that incorrect throws or excessive contamination with other waste groups or impurities can be efficiently corrected on site.

The Fraunhofer Research Institution for Materials Recycling and Resource Strategies IWKS shows applications for a new polymer raw material made from food residues, which is not only bio-based but also biodegradable.

E-waste contains many recyclable materials that should be recovered for recycling. These include high-quality metals such as gold, copper, tantalum and rare earth elements, but also high-quality plastics. While some metals such as gold and copper, for example, can already be recovered efficiently, many valuable materials and around half of the low-concentration metals contained in e-waste are still lost in conventional recycling processes. A consortium consisting of the Technische Universität Aschaffenburg, the Fraunhofer Research Institution for Materials Recycling and Resource Strategies IWKS and the industrial partners Sesotec and Mairec has now set itself the goal within the framework of the project "IRVE - Innovative Recycling Processes for Electronic Waste" of finding new processes for the efficient recovery of components containing valuable materials from electronic waste.