BoostLab6-1: EnzyPol - Enzymatic Alternatives for Cobalt Dryers
Project duration
October 1, 2022 to December 31, 2023
Project partners
RWTH Aachen, ABBt (Chair of Biotechnology)
Forschungszentrum Jülich, IBG-1 (Institute of Biotechnology, Bioprocesses and Bioanalytics)
Project description
In the plastics processing industry, cobalt is used, among other things, as an accelerator for the curing of composites such as glass-fiber-reinforced plastics based on unsaturated polyester resins. A large area of application is vehicle and boat construction. Rotor blades for wind turbines are also made from these composites. In 2020, the European market for composites cured with cobalt was over 330,000 tons.
Due to its classification as a carcinogen and its limited availability, the EnzyPol project aims to replace cobalt with a biotechnologically produced enzyme as a substitute product with equivalent performance. To this end, suitable enzymes must be identified and tested and optimized on the basis of application criteria. In addition, the development and optimization of appropriate microbial production processes for the enzymes and the economic evaluation of the substitute material in application tests play a major role. The project pursues the goal of developing the production process for the enzyme product from microcultivation to laboratory scale and transfer to technical pilot scale.
Open positions
currently none