Groundbreaking ceremony for Fraunhofer ZESS institute building at the Research Airport New project centre cooperates with the Battery LabFactory

The Fraunhofer Center for Energy Storage and Systems ZESS stands for the development of system solutions for energy storage and hydrogen technologies. To implement these goals, the three research partners, the Fraunhofer Institute for Manufacturing Technology and Advanced Materials IFAM, the Fraunhofer Institute for Surface Engineering and Thin Films IST and the Fraunhofer Institute for Ceramic Technologies and Systems IKTS, will receive a new institute building at Braunschweig Research Airport. A close cooperation partner is Technische Universität Braunschweig with the Battery LABFactory. The ground-breaking ceremony on 7 June 2023 marks the start of construction for a research building with a usable area of over 3400 square metres.

Groundbreaking ceremony on 7 June 2023, from left: Dr. Christian Wunderlich (Deputy Director Fraunhofer IKTS), Prof. Sabrina Zellmer (Head of Department Fraunhofer IST), Dr. Julian Schwenzel (Head ZESS), Prof. Matthias Busse (Director Fraunhofer IFAM), Falko Mohrs (Lower Saxony Minister for Science and Culture), Prof. Christoph Herrmann (Institute Director Fraunhofer IST and TU Institute for Machine Tools and Production Technology), Dr. Thorsten Kornblum (Lord Mayor of the City of Braunschweig), Prof. Arno Kwade (Vice President for Technology Transfer and Innovation, TU Braunschweig, BLB spokesperson) and Dr. Patrick Hoyer (Research Coordination of the Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft e.V.). Photo credit: Andreas Rudolph, © Fraunhofer

Fraunhofer ZESS was already launched on 7 February 2019. Since then, the scientists of the three Fraunhofer Institutes have been conducting research and development in the premises of the Automotive Research Centre Niedersachsen (NFF) in close cooperation with TU Braunschweig and in the neighbouring Lilienthalhaus at the Research Airport. The new building now provides a unique infrastructure and research platform that are necessary for the development and implementation of future energy storage systems from prototype to industrialisation.

Professor Arno Kwade, Vice President for Technology Transfer and Innovation at TU Braunschweig, emphasised at the ground-breaking ceremony: “The ground-breaking ceremony for the new Fraunhofer ZESS marks an important milestone in the further expansion of the battery research cluster in the Braunschweig region. While research has so far focused primarily on lithium-ion batteries used in today’s vehicles, Fraunhofer ZESS will focus on the development and, above all, production and scaling of the next battery and hydrogen technologies. This will transfer innovations from the university laboratories into a ready-to-use technology and open up promising business fields for companies and start-ups in the region, especially in the area of sustainability and the circular economy.”