“The infrastructure is there—it just needs to be adapted for the future.” Interview with Prof. Dr. Benjamin Klusemann

Together with colleagues from the Institute for Production Technology and Systems, Klusemann is researching how recycled materials can open up new sources of raw materials and thus significantly reduce costs. At the 2nd Leuphana Industry Colloquium on November 26, representatives from science and industry will discuss current approaches to circularity.

To put it bluntly: How can the circular economy pay off for companies?

It's a question of resources: How available are they and what do they cost? With the circular economy, we create access to materials that would otherwise be difficult or expensive to obtain. Magnesium is a good example: We are heavily dependent on China. This is expensive, burdens the environment, and makes us dependent on uncertain supply chains. But if we recover magnesium from existing components, we create a new, significantly more energy-efficient source of raw materials. This is a clear competitive advantage – especially with rising CO₂ prices. And it is more sustainable anyway. There are already a great many materials in circulation. Especially with regard to future generations, we need to think about what happens to them. That is why the circular economy is crucial for companies, for economic reasons, but also for ethical and sustainability reasons.

What are the biggest challenges at the moment?

The biggest challenge is to design the process chain in such a way that it can cope with the changed properties of recycled materials while still meeting the requirements for new components. Alloys and impurities change the material properties. The question is: How tolerant can we make our manufacturing process or our entire value chain in order to deal with these variations? We need to rethink our approach: not every recycled material has to be used in the same application again. A material that is no longer suitable for aircraft construction can still be used to great effect in small electronics, for example. This means that when recycling or upcycling a material, we always have to keep in mind what we want to use it for later.

Are there already successful examples of this in practice?

Yes, recycling is already a standard process for aluminum. A large proportion of the aluminum used today already contains recycled content. This is extremely beneficial in terms of energy – we are talking about energy savings of up to 90 percent compared to primary production. However, this also means that manufacturing processes will have to become more flexible in the future in order to cope with fluctuating material properties and ensure greater purity of materials. We need to take a holistic view of the value chain.

What role can research play in accelerating the transformation to circular economy production?

Our task is to better understand, simulate, and optimize processes. We often work with industry partners on so-called demonstrators. These are real components on a laboratory scale, such as solar panels on recycled aluminum rails or small-scale aircraft components, which we can use to understand and test processes. Simulations are also playing an increasingly important role in this: we combine experimental data with AI-supported models to make processes more efficient, for example with digital images that allow conclusions to be drawn about optimal process parameters.

Can networks and regional communities such as the Leuphana Innovation Community Sustainable Production strengthen this transformation?

Absolutely. The exchange with companies shows us where the real problems lie and which problems are currently occurring. In addition, we learn about best practice examples that advance our research. Some of them are presented at the 2nd Leuphana Industry Colloquium, for example. Such activities strengthen mutual understanding. Companies see what the university is doing and vice versa. That is a huge advantage. It allows us to look at specific problems and at the same time create transferable results for different industries. Small and medium-sized enterprises in particular benefit from this because they gain access to new knowledge and partners—this creates real synergy effects in the region.

What opportunities could this offer for Germany as an industrial location?

Compared to other countries, Germany has strong industrial production. If we succeed in converting this holistically to green energy and stable, regional supply chains, we can not only become more independent and energy-efficient, but also more cost-effective with correspondingly high quality. The infrastructure is in place—it just needs to be consistently adapted to the challenges of the future.