My research focuses on biopolymer-based aerogels derived from renewable resources, which have gained increasing attention as sustainable high-performance materials. These aerogels are extremely lightweight, highly porous, and can exhibit excellent thermal insulation properties. In particular, lignocellulose-based aerogels are promising environmentally friendly alternatives to conventional insulation materials, as they combine high functional performance with biodegradability and a reduced environmental footprint. An important aspect of my work is the use of biomass waste streams as raw materials, which further improves sustainability by valorizing underutilized resources within existing biorefinery and biomass value chains.
To produce these bioaerogels, complex biomass is transformed into structured gel networks through a combination of chemical and mechanical modification steps. This includes processes such as hydrolysis to tailor the polymer composition and mechanical disintegration or grinding, for example using a disk mill, to obtain suitable fibril structures for gel formation. The resulting gels are then subjected to solvent exchange and supercritical CO₂ drying, which preserves the highly porous network structure and yields lightweight aerogels with tunable properties. Throughout this process, the choice of biomass-derived feedstock and the applied processing conditions strongly influence the morphology, mechanical stability, and thermal performance of the final aerogel materials.
This work is carried out within the German Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Climate Action–funded project AEROLIGNOCEL, which aims to develop next-generation cellulose- and lignocellulose-based aerogels as green high-performance thermal insulation materials. The project includes the use of commercially available raw materials as well as optimized product streams from biorefineries and involves pilot-scale production on an existing aerogel pilot plant. The developed materials are tested in application-oriented laboratory and pilot-scale studies, particularly for building insulation, thermal logistics, and cooling applications, with potential extensions to areas such as carrier and electrode materials.
