ADMIRATION

ACCELERATED DISCOVERY OF LIVING FIBER-REINFORCED MINERAL COMPOSITE MATERIALS FOR CIRCULAR CONSTRUCTION

Living building materials offer great potential for promoting the circular economy, but their performance characteristics lag behind those of conventional materials. The key question is how enhanced properties and combinations can create a novel material. The project brings together synthetic biology, combinatorial additive manufacturing and architectural bio-design to create Living Fibre-reinforced Mineralised Fibre composites (LFMFs) that will have excellent material properties while ensuring circularity. LFMFs are expected to become a viable alternative to cement-based materials in scalable applications in the construction sector.

The overall objective of ADMIRATION is to develop in a systems-oriented approach 3D Structured Living Fiber-reinforced Mineral Composites (LFRMCs) as advanced, circular construction materials. We will pursue the following specific objectives:

• Identification of cultivation parameters for engineered microbial consortia growing LFRMCs
• Engineering of microorganisms for optogenetic 3D tuning of material properties
• Accelerated sampling of the design parameter space by automated combinatorial additive manufacturing
• Development of mold-based casting for 3D-structured Living Fiber Mineral Composites
• Scaled-up production of 3D demonstrators: a partition wall panel (conventional use) and free-formed shell (potential for new applications)

Ensuring circularity and maximizing sustainability by continuous LCA integration.

PARTICIPATING RESEARCHER

Prof. Martin Ostermann
Institute of Building Technology and Design (IBK), University of Stuttgart

RESEARCHERS

Eliza Biala (IBK)
Piotr Baszyński (IBK)

PARTNERS

Prof. Dr. sc. nat. Wilfried Weber
INM - Leibniz Institute for New Materials and Saarland University,
Department of Materials Science and Engineering,
Saarbrücken, Germany

Dr. Achim Weber
Faculty of Energy, Technology, Process Engineering and Biotechnology,
Institute of Interfacial Process Engineering and Plasma Technology IGVP,
University of Stuttgart

FUNDING

Volkswagen Stiftung:
Circularity with Recycled And Biogenic Resources