When by-products become the starting point for new value creation

The bark and sapwood of black locust are produced as separate material streams during processing, but to date have often been used solely for energy or not utilised at all. The ‘Robi’ research project is investigating which constituents can be extracted from them and what industrial applications might arise from them in the future.

The specialist article ‘Black locust – far more than just heartwood’, published in the Holz-Zentralblatt, describes the project in greater detail. For TransBIB, the main point of interest here is how such research findings can lead to new applications, collaborations and value chains.

If the future application is still pending

In research projects, it is not always clear from the outset exactly what product will ultimately be produced. The ‘Robi’ project is investigating various extraction methods to make the constituents of bark and sapwood accessible and to better assess their potential for future applications.

For further development, it may be worthwhile to involve additional companies or research partners. Depending on the intended use, new requirements may arise regarding material properties, processing, fabrication or product development.
The TransBIB Matching Platform offers a way to highlight specific needs. Among other things, technologies, expertise, materials, material flows or project partnerships can be sought or offered. For example, this allows companies to be approached that wish to examine, further process or test specific biogenic ingredients in their own applications.

Additional expertise for new applications

The material utilisation of by-products often involves several specialist fields simultaneously. The ‘Robi’ project brings together wood processing, raw material processing, chemical processes and potential industrial applications. New ideas for utilisation may require additional expertise – for example, in the fields of analytics, materials development, process engineering or product development.

The TransBIB Competence Pool makes relevant specialist knowledge discoverable beyond the scope of the existing project.

Project teams can use the platform to search specifically for specialists when additional expertise is required for the next stage of development. Conversely, experts can showcase their skills and thus make themselves available for new collaborations.

This is particularly relevant for early-stage research projects. Whether an approach can be pursued further often depends not only on technical feasibility, but also on whether the appropriate expertise is available to tackle the next research question.

Combining regional strength with national expertise

‘Robi’ was developed within the Land-Innovation-Lausitz innovation alliance. The alliance’s approach is to bring companies and research institutions together at an early stage and to develop research questions as closely as possible to their eventual applications.

To further develop such approaches, it may be worthwhile to involve expertise and organisations from outside one’s own region.

Through its competence hubs, TransBIB connects regional bioeconomy networks and innovation structures from across Germany. This enables research findings, collaboration needs and experiences from individual regions to be shared with other networks.

For projects such as ‘Robi’, this opens up new possibilities: a stream of materials for which no suitable application yet exists locally may be matched with a suitable technology, a company or a research group in another region. Experience gained from similar projects can also be accessed more quickly.

Such links help to ensure that regional research activities are not viewed in isolation, but that knowledge and expertise are developed across regional boundaries.

From research findings to the next collaboration

It is not yet clear exactly which products will be derived from the black locust material streams under investigation. The project is initially laying the scientific foundations and examining which constituents and processes may be of interest for further use.

Various questions may then become relevant for the next stage of the transfer: Who could make use of the extracted compounds? What additional expertise is required for their application? Are there any companies or research groups working on similar issues? And in which region does the relevant expertise already exist?

TransBIB provides various ways to access this: The matching platform highlights specific collaboration needs, the expertise pool makes it easier to find specialist know-how, and the expertise hubs connect regional bioeconomy structures across Germany.

In this way, research findings can gain visibility beyond the original project context, giving rise to new opportunities for collaboration and bio-based value creation.