© Leins Aktenvernichtungs GmbH/Jochen Weiblen
Until now, the most common way to dispose of green waste and sewage sludge has been to compost or incinerate it. However, using these materials to produce the valuable energy source hydrogen would make far more sense. A team of researchers at the Fraunhofer Institute for Manufacturing Engineering and Automation IPA is working towards this very goal. CO2 capture is key to this development: The CO2 that is generated during the production of hydrogen from waste is separated and then used as a raw material in the chemical industry, for example. In this way, the research team can produce carbon-negative hydrogen from organic waste using a variety of processes, which consequently remove CO2 from the atmosphere.