The jury of the TUM Ideaward has selected the three best founding ideas from all applications. The award winners cover a diverse range of topics.
TUM Ideaward: prizes for sustainable building material, a recycling reactor, and a patch against urinary tract infections
First place goes to Hopfon, whose idea is a building material made from hops. Architecture student Marlene Stechl and Thomas Rojas Sonderegger, a civil engineering student, discovered that the fiber plant is excellent as a raw material for acoustic panels, insulation materials, and building panels. By growing hops in Germany, transport routes in material production could be shortened, thus saving additional greenhouse gas emissions. Since only a small part of the hops harvest is used for beer production, waste products could be utilized, which gives the team not only an ecological but also a cost advantage over competitors. Hopfon’s goal is to develop a product that can be disassembled back into its components at the end of its life, making circular use possible. This way, the founding team wants to make both the construction industry and agriculture more sustainable.
Second place goes to Wasteex. Chemistry student Elias Hasel and Marc Xia, a doctoral researcher at the Chair of Plant and Process Engineering, are developing a pyrolysis reactor for use in regions without recycling facilities. In pyrolysis, materials are split in a thermochemical process at high temperatures. Oil can be recovered from plastic this way. Conventional systems are designed for industrialized mass processes and operators need technical expertise. In contrast, the Wasteex reactor is to be compact, modularly constructed, and easy to operate. The founding team sees not only ecological advantages but also the potential for new value chains in low-income regions – from collecting, sorting, and shredding plastic through pyrolysis to using the oil for fuels.
Pavoo takes third place in the TUM Ideaward. Cordula Loock, a student of pharmaceutical bioprocess engineering, and Christian Loock, a graduate in aerospace engineering, have developed a patch that covers the urethral opening of women during sexual intercourse and is intended to prevent urinary tract infections by preventing germs from entering.
