RD&I

Incubation Cluster

Solutions Beyond Chemistry

Already today digital products and solutions improve people’s lives by eliminating tasks that are monotonous or dangerous, enhance research, as well as increasing the productivity in many industries.

Driven by enabling technologies, such as faster computers, advanced data analytics, machine learning, and low-cost sensors the digital transformation is making further progress.

This transformation brings a radical structural change: It combines and merges the digital with the physical world.  For example, new approaches of data analytics can make sense out of the increasing amount of data − from chemical and biological research, production processes, suppliers, and customers. New insights are created leading to increased efficiency, completely new products and outcome-based services, where businesses compete on their ability to deliver quantifiable results to customers instead of physical products.

Whether in chemistry, health, mobility, or the overarching topic of sustainability – the ability to use data analytics and connectivity is offering a plethora of new application and business models that are beyond the scope of traditional industries. It is this “beyond” that is the aim as well as name-giver of this Creavis Incubation Cluster.

In depth understanding of applications and the underlying chemical formulations is the key for a successful additives business. It is generated in application labs in which customer processes are performed or simulated. Although used in small quantities, additives have a dramatic effect on the performance of the full formulation and thus the overall application. This understanding is called domain know-how.

Within our team New Formulation Business this domain know-how is used as base to develop sustainable solutions that make products more durable, allow the repair of goods, enable resource friendly materials to be applied, or help to bring materials from end-of-life products back to high value applications. Moreover, from the combination of domain know-how and applied data science benefits for the customers are created that generate new value streams for Evonik in addition to revenues from physical products.

In total, New Formulation Business is positioned as provider for solutions that enable our customers to meet their sustainability targets in the sectors of construction, packaging materials and consumer goods.

How can the quality of value streams be improved and made more sustainable? Many of our customers are striving to answer this question, and we are helping them to do so by making value chains more transparent and traceable and by linking them to digital processes. For example, new data-intensive selection processes can be used to determine the origin and relative health of meat samples after slaughter in a way that cannot be falsified.

Plastic streams can be made visible so that they can be better separated and the separated material better recycled. The data obtained in this process can simultaneously be used to assess the purity and condition of the material. As these approaches contribute to a new understanding of the system, they are the basis for new business models which are addressed by our team.

In the next decades, new technologies and mobility concepts will revolutionize established mobility patterns and modes of transportation. The future of private transport will be electrical, autonomous, connected, sustainable, ground- and airborne, and operated in many cases as a service, e.g., car driving will change into being driven and cars will become rolling workplaces and cozy social rooms.

In addition, as the world responds to environmental concerns new disruptive technologies need to be developed, for example more and more innovators look skywards to solve current mobility issues (e.g., congestion and noise pollution). Therefore, we focus on products and solutions that support the ongoing transformation of mobility with solutions to significantly increase the energy efficiency, sustainability and connectivity in roads, air, space, rail, and sea traffic.

Current Solutions Beyond Chemistry Projects

Epigenetics - More insight into meat

Environmental influences cause changes in DNA. We at Creavis are making use of this in combination with bioinformatics to learn more about the life of chickens. In practice, our approach could provide more animal welfare and responsibility in the meat industry.