Review of the Symposium 2024

This year's Blue Bioeconomy Symposium was once again a resounding success: there were excellent presentations from ongoing and completed BaMS projects, exciting keynotes, culinary delights, worthy Blue.Award winners and a wonderfully romantic dinner event in the middle of the Kiel Fjord. Here is an overview of the highlights.

Image: Coordinator Julia Lange welcomes Dr Katja Zocher before her exciting keynote speech on algae extraction with plasma.

The first day of the symposium began with a welcome address by Prof. Carsten Schulz from Kiel University and Julia Lange, coordinator of the BaMS innovation space.

Julia gave an overview of the changing aquaculture industry and made some international comparisons with Germany as a production location. For us in the EU, there is still considerable room for improvement, even though trends towards more sustainable production are already evident in this country.

Our new board member, Prof. Carsten Schultz (with ‘tz’) from the CAU's Technology Management department, also introduced himself and began the day with a presentation on innovation research, the measurability of transfer services and some interesting examples from Blue Health Tec, which deals with the medical applications of algae extracts. This is a sector with great potential, for example in the search for a cure for age-related macular degeneration.

Image: Stefan Hindersin from Sea & Sun Organics presented several BaMS projects that are coming together under his leadership.

OnAsta, addingAsta, BALI, ÖkoPro and EOM presented themselves in the thematic block of completed BaMS projects.

The ‘Asta’ projects are all led by Sea & Sun Organics, which was presented by Stefan Hindersin and Moritz Rohte. They focus on the active ingredient astaxanthin, which is extracted from Haematococcus species, for example, and has numerous health benefits. As a radical scavenger, astaxanthin is a good dietary supplement and can do much more than ‘just’ colour salmon red.

For the BALI project, Dr Rafael Meichßner from Coastal Research & Management gave his usual charming and entertaining presentation on the outcomes of the macroalgae biorefinery, using Fucus as an example.

ÖkoPro was represented by its project partner GICON, a company that designs, builds and tests innovative bioreactors. Managing Director Martin Ecke presented the results of surface water purification using microalgae with his innovative ‘Christmas tree’ reactor.

Image: the ‘Tannenbaum’ reactor from GICON. If the initial algae biomass is dense enough, it is entirely possible to cultivate microalgae economically even using ‘problem water’ from biogas plants.

The EOM project has just started and, for organisational reasons, was presented on the first day by Ms Claudia Busse-Uhrig from VivaMaris. This BaMS project aims to develop surfaces suitable for the cultivation of macroalgae suitable for human consumption, e.g. Ulva.

After the lunch break, there was a special ‘AIS’: Convenience GmbH, represented by Eskil Puhl, treated all participants to delicious ice cream made from only five ingredients, one of which is spirulina, which naturally reduces the amount of added sugar as it also counteracts crystal formation and rounds off the chocolate or strawberry flavour without any compromises and without the need for extra additives. At first, it is not easy for the brain to correctly categorise green ice cream with strawberry flavour. In any case, the arguments in favour of spirulina ice cream were clearly formulated and absolutely delicious.

The event continued with pitches from the four start-ups that qualified for the Blue.Awards nomination: Max Nettlau and Alyssa Richter from Meergut presented their golden cuddly toys filled with seaweed (@Meergut_Kiel on Instagram). Daniele Liprandi from the University of Greifswald presented EvoNEST, a software that simplifies the monitoring of small-scale biological production processes and can be customised to save teams from redundancy and annoying WhatsApp groups.

The SOLAR team, presented by Adrian Aytinas and Christoph Mousel, came all the way from Frankfurt to pitch a production of skin- and environmentally-friendly UV blockers, known as ‘mycosporine-like amino acids’ or MAAs for short. The goal is to create sunscreens that do not have a harmful impact on sensitive marine organisms, as coral reefs, for example, suffer greatly from conventional sunscreen that ends up in the sea.

Georg Walder from Energyminer, based near Munich, had an even longer journey. Energyfish can be used to generate tidal energy, which, compared to previous ambitions of this kind, produces particularly high conversion rates, can be fed into the grid in a stable manner and is certified as fish-friendly. He was able to convince the audience with this concept and won first place, which came with a prize of €1,000.

1st place: Energyminer

2nd place: SOLAR

3rd place: Meergut & EvoNest (tie)

Congratulations to all the winners and thank you to AQUATOR for organising the Blue.Awards!

Image: Winner of the Blue.Awards 2024: Georg Walder from Energyminer. Second image: Prototype of an Energyfish flow generator

Image: Max Nettlau and Alyssa Richter from Meergut produce soft toys filled with seaweed.

Image: EvoNEST simplifies the management, documentation and monitoring of biological production processes.

Image: Adrian Aytinas and Christoph Mousel from SOLAR express amino acids with UV protection properties in E. coli in order to produce environmentally friendly sunscreen creams.

The evening continued in a lively atmosphere on the historic paddle steamer FREYA. Tim Staufenberger from Kieler Meeresfarm entertained the symposium participants with lots of interesting facts and anecdotes about his algae farm and the Kiel Fjord. The buffet left nothing to be desired, and fortunately no one went thirsty : )

The second day of the symposium was devoted to the new BaMS projects. We were welcomed by Prof. Rüdiger Schulz, who has been involved in a number of BaMS projects and has shown outstanding commitment since the innovation space was first established.

Next up was the lively Dr Katja Zocher (top picture), who presented her topic of physical plasma and its groundbreaking possibilities in a very understandable way with powerful images.

Afterwards, the winner of the previous evening, Georg Walder, was given the opportunity to present the Energyminer concept in detail once again. His presentation was followed by Dirk Scheel, a well-known figure in the bioeconomy, who presented the BaMS project SektoRAS, in which Naturwind Schwerin GmbH successfully links sectors in order to close energy cycles.

Image: Dirk Scheel, project manager at SektoRAS

Next up was Andé Stelling from algatec, a company that specialises in microalgae supplements. The BaMS project AlgaFit focuses on sports supplements from a modular bioreactor that is even more space- and energy-efficient than previous concepts. A spin-off product is also planned in the form of revitalising feed supplements for senior pets. In the exhibition area of the symposium, he also presented algaBags: tiny reactor bags for 10-litre cultivation of pure microalgae species.

Dr Michaela Oesser, managing director of ADS Grenzfriedensbund, proudly presented the AundB educational project. Here, pupils at a school camp on the Schlei will learn about a microalgae reactor that treats all the grey water from the property and discharges it with reduced nutrients. The heavily polluted Schlei will certainly benefit from this; moreover, it can serve as an example that operating such a plant is by no means rocket science. The project has only just started and has invited participants to a kick-off event in early December. We will of course provide you with further information.

The topic of education was continued, again with Stefan Hindersin from Sea&Sun Organics. The AlgaEducate project focuses on public acceptance of microalgae products and educating people about the overwhelming advantages compared to the concerns that often still prevail. This project has also just been launched and will certainly be able to report on its implementation soon. His colleague Clemens Elle took over the presentation of AstaOptiForm, a project dealing with side streams from astaxanthin production, before Stefan Hindersin continued with a report on BioNEM, in which Haematococcus will be cultivated using a standard that is even suitable for organic certification and is intended to create a visible sign of sustainability in astaxanthin production in order to enable competitiveness against imports from Asia.

The penultimate presentation was given by Jan Klein from Schierbecker Handels GmbH & Co.KG, who presented the wonderful NAFi project. In a newly utilised ‘old’ property near Gönnebek, close to Trappenkamp, fish farming, microalgae reactor water purification and microgreen production are being combined. This allows decentralisation and sector coupling to be demonstrated in an economic application example.

The honour of the final presentation went to Kai Meissner from Acheron GmbH, who presented the UrbanAqua model site. Under his project management, a kind of bioeconomic farm is being created in the middle of the city on the site of the former Kellogg's factories on Bremen's Überseeinsel. Chickens, which produce manure and nitrogenous gases, are not used for egg production, but their ‘by-products’ provide valuable fertiliser for microalgae cultivation. The process water from the microalgae is used to cultivate mini vegetables, while the microalgae themselves form a food supplement for edible fish farming right next door. This is a broad cycle that is closed in bioeconomic terms and shows how the food supply of the future can function without wasting resources.

Image: Kai Meissner from Acheron GmbH presented the UrbanAqua model location.

Image: Front row: Prof. Rüdiger Schulz, Julia Lange, Katharina Krüger, Louisa Rau, Nadine Sydow; back row: Chairman Mirko Bögner (AWI), Norbert Reintjes (TH Lübeck), Cornelia Herzog-Truxa, Susanne Wolf and Ingmar Hofmann

A big thank you goes out to all participants, speakers and the fantastic organisers of Symposium 2024!