Sustainable natural fibre resources from primary and secondary raw materials

Nettle, hemp, hops or oil flax - these plants stand for much more than weeds, drugs, beer or oil. They provide high-quality fibers that are not only interesting for the production of textiles, but can also be used for building or insulating materials in industry and thus replace fossil raw materials. In addition to known and unknown fiber plants, we are particularly interested in lignocellulose-containing biomasses from the co-cultivation and residual use of food and feed plants or energy sources. Biomasses from the rewetting of peat land (paludicultures) are a promising new field.

In our technical center, we have machines and systems from small to pilot scale for the preparation and processing of fiber plants. In addition to the mechanical processing of dry biomass by decortication, these also enable the particle disintegration of wett raw materials using extruder or disk mill. In the facility, the intermediate products can be further processed into plate-shaped end products after the addition of binders. Analysis capacities with appropriate equipment are available for all processing stages, for example a scanning electron microscope for structural analysis, a universal testing machine for determining mechanical properties and chemical analyses.