Turning ideas into markets

Research and development (R&D) is a key driver of innovation and success at Evonik. Since 2006 we've been spending over €300 million a year on it in Chemicals alone. Some 2,300 highly qualified staff at 35 locations around the world are on the hunt day in, day out for new substances, products, ideas and models, in some cases jointly with customer and supplier R&D departments. To stay at the leading edge of scientific research, we also have over 250 partnerships with universities the world over.

Wherever the Chemicals branch of Evonik targets new, high-profitability, future-focused business sectors in strongly growing markets, our subsidiary Creavis Technologies & Innovation is usually involved. We have created several special forms of organization to ensure that Creavis can move fast and responsively. In our project houses set up for three-year periods, teams of 20 to 30 scientists from different business units focus on developing new technology platforms. The teams work closely with business units and external partners such as universities, research institutes and customers. The ultimate objective is to commercialize the findings through a business unit or internal start-up.

The science-to-business approach developed at Creavis provides an ideal structural platform for implementing innovation projects where there is substantial inherent risk. The approach is based on vertically integrating all R&D activities along the entire value chain under a single roof—from basic research through to product development and pilot production. This significantly cuts time from development to market. Successful examples include electrodes and separators delivering high-performance energy storage in the form of lithium-ion batteries, printable electronics for radio frequency identification (RFID) applications, and flexible thin-film solar cells for harvesting solar energy more economically.

Successful research is also done in our business units themselves, not least when it comes to further developing existing products and markets. Like ‘farmed fuel’, which mostly comes from soybean or rapeseed. Our alkoxide catalysts not only enhance yield in biodiesel production. They also boost the purity of the glycerine that comes out as a byproduct of the process. Uses of glycerine include cosmetics, antifreeze as well as microchip and toothpaste production. We also use renewable raw materials like wheat, corn and sugar cane to produce ethyl tert-butyl ether (ETBE), a gasoline additive. This anti-knock agent optimizes fuel burning in internal combustion engines and so reduces their impact on the environment.

The environment also posed some major challenges for the engineers in our Energy Business Area when they were designing the US$1.5 billion Iskenderun coal power plant. The power station, which meets nearly six percent of Turkey’s entire electricity demand, stands on a shallow bay unnavigable to bulk carriers. We got around this by developing and building the world’s biggest floating loading platform. The platform is nearly 100 meters long, over 50 meters tall and about 50 meters across. Bulk carriers pull in alongside, cranes transfer the coal to smaller barges that are automatically unloaded onto conveyors at the power plant landing stage. The facility can turn around up to 30,000 metric tons of coal a day.

Picking up on social trends in their early days so we can be ready to respond with new solutions is a defining feature of Evonik in its Real Estate Business Area. Take the waste disposal systems we set up in Düsseldorf and Duisburg, where people only pay for the garbage they actually produce. This rewards environmentally responsible occupants while keeping down their ancillary costs. We also upgrade our apartments by making them more energy-efficient. Windows, doors, thermal insulation, and modern, efficient heating systems are consciously selected on energy saving criteria. This helps to protect the environment while keeping ancillary costs in check.