A5 Group "Eco-Tech/Sustainable Biotech"

Biotechnologies are not a-priori "green", as they use also fossil energy and produce wastes in air, water and soil even these are biocompatible. The term sustainability is useful for a new-orientation and ecologicalisation of engineering towards a sustainable lifestyle. Based on "eco-principles", which can be extracted from ecosphere with the aid of a macroscopic pattern analysis, the pathway towards sustainability can be followed step by step by introducing the criteria of embeddedness, non-invasiveness, efficiency and sufficiency in process engineering. The topics handled in the group are conventional process engineering work i.e. mathematical modelling of process kinetics and process design in industry (bioreactors) and design work of production processes comparing chemical and biological pathways with the aid of a newly developed index of sustainability, which is based on the eco-active soil area.