boratory setup for the removal of micropollutants, developed in cooperation between Friedrich Schiller University Jena and Fraunhofer IKTS.
Fraunhofer IKTS
Research into new, forward-looking approaches to a safe and sustainable water supply is being promoted in Thuringia in the long term. The "Thuringian Water Innovation Cluster" (ThWIC), initiated by Friedrich Schiller University Jena together with the Fraunhofer Institute for Ceramic Technologies and Systems IKTS and Ernst Abbe University of Applied Sciences Jena, prevailed in the final round of the Clusters4Future competition and will be funded by the Federal Ministry of Education and Research from 2023. This means that over the next nine years, up to 45 million euros in funding will flow into the development of new water technologies and research into how society deals with this increasingly scarce resource.
"With our cluster, we want to bring successful research from Thuringia's universities and research institutes into social application and show how the region's small and medium-sized enterprises can develop global market opportunities with cutting-edge technologies," says Prof. Dr. Michael Stelter. The chemist, who as deputy institute director at Fraunhofer IKTS and director at the Center for Energy and Environmental Chemistry at the University of Jena is coordinator of the project, is particularly pleased that with ThWIC no pure technology cluster was selected for funding: "Our projects are not only about technical innovations for a more sustainable water supply, but also about cooperation with civil society." Even though the topic of water is increasingly present in the media, there is often still a lack of information on water issues and the participation of business and society in the upcoming upheavals in water use.
The more than 20 subprojects of the innovation cluster deal with a wide variety of aspects of sustainable water supply. One central area is new technologies for analyzing and purifying water.