This year's winners of the chemPLANT student competition for creative young process engineers (kjVI) organized by the VDI Society for Process and Chemical Engineering (GVC) come from Clausthal University of Technology. The winning team of Deniz Cifci, André Hebenbrock, Dominika Siwek, Hannes Stagg and team leader Lydia Weseler completely convinced the jury at the digital ProcessNet annual conference with their concept. The Clausthal team used the bacterium Cupriavidus necator to produce MICROTEIN - a fictitious vegan protein concentrate with low land and water requirements and negativeCO2 emissions.
Winning team impresses with a vegan protein concentrate with low land and water requirements and negativeCO2 emissions
The continuous growth of the world's population and advancing climate change make it necessary to use all resources more efficiently. Proteins, which humans need for their metabolism, are essential for the supply of food. Despite the increasing use of plant protein, animal protein is the main source of protein in the human diet. However, meat production through animal husbandry is resource-intensive and animal husbandry currently accounts for 14.5 percent of anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions.
The task for the competition participants was to develop an alternative protein source fromCO2 for use in the food industry. They had to evaluate reasonable degrees of purity, the costs of the marketable material flows and the impact of the overall process on the environment. The concept and process development focused in particular on innovation, sustainability and cost-effectiveness.
The winning team from Clausthal University of Technology presented the ChemPLANT jury with MICROTEIN, a fictitious protein source that is suitable for vegetarians and vegans and has a much smaller ecological footprint than soy protein concentrate. MICROTEIN contains 78 percent protein, which increases the protein content by almost 20 percent compared to soy protein concentrate. It contains all essential amino acids, which is an optimal requirement for human nutrition.
17 student teams took part in the ChemPLANT competition. The Clausthal team received prize money of 2,000 euros for their winning concept. The second and third-placed teams from Niederrhein University of Applied Sciences and RWTH Aachen University can look forward to prize money of 1,000 and 500 euros respectively.
The VDI Society for Process Engineering and Chemical Engineering (GVC) organizes the chemPLANT competition every year with different tasks. The aim is to inspire students to plan industrial processes and design new plants. The main aim is to encourage lateral thinking - even ideas that seem crazy at first glance are expressly encouraged. The 2020 chemPLANT competition was financially supported by BASF, Bayer, Clariant, Covestro, Evonik and Merck. Further information on the competition can be found at www.vdi.de/chemplant.
