The start-up company re.solution from Aachen, founded in 2023, was awarded several prizes in the first half of 2024. The technology that re.solution uses for the environmentally friendly recycling of textiles was developed as part of BioSC projects and was further developed in BioökonomieREVIER innovation labs and other projects before the company was founded.
The purification of biotechnologically manufactured products is a key technology for the bioeconomy. For platform chemicals such as carboxylic acids in particular, it represents an energy-, cost- and resource-intensive process step and is therefore essential for the competitiveness of the overall process. In the BioSC projects HyImPAct and R2HPBio, succinic acid, a basic building block for biobased polymers, was produced from plant biomass using microorganisms and a new electrochemical purification process was established.
Conventionally, the pH value is regulated by adding certain chemicals. However, this is associated with a high level of secondary production of neutral salts, the disposal of which is problematic and involves high water consumption. With the “Power-to-Purity” process concept, which was developed and tested at RWTH Aachen University as part of the BioSC projects from 2018 to 2021, these waste streams can be completely avoided. This reduces the environmental impact, increases cost efficiency and enables competitiveness in the biotechnological production of platform chemicals from biomass such as organic waste from the agricultural and food industries. Last but not least, the operation of future biorefinery plants without problematic salt emissions is no longer necessary at a site close to major watercourses, as is the case with traditional chemical production sites.
The electrochemical purification process was further developed from 2019 to 2021 in the BioökonomieREVIER Innovation Lab EHyBio, which has been continued under the project acronym ZeTA since 2022. Here, the prototype of a reactor was created and the process was transferred to a larger scale. Based on these processes, the technology for the chemical recycling of polyesters from used textiles has been further developed at the AVT-Aachener Verfahrenstechnik (Aachen Chemical Engineering) in cooperation with the Institute of Textile Technology since 2021. The “University-Based Business Start-Ups (EXIST)” program is funded in Germany via the European Social Fund Plus (EFS Plus) by the European Union and by the Federal Ministry of Economic Affairs and Climate Action. The start-up re.solution was founded a few months after the start of funding in fall 2023.
In 2022, the re.solution team won second prize with its business plan in the AC2 start-up competition organized by Gründerregion Aachen and AGIT. In June 2024, re.solution won the Achema Startup Award out of 10 finalists. Further awards followed in July with the ATEC Spin-off Award from RWTH Innovation GmbH and the DN POWER UP x REVIER PITCH from WIN.DN, the Düren Business and Innovation Network, and Zukunftsagentur Rheinisches Revier GmbH.