Josef-Ressel-Center celebrates its first birthday

The "Josef Ressel Center for the Production of Powdered Activated Carbon from Municipal Residues" celebrated its first birthday. On September 1 last year, the center started at the Department for Environmental-, Process- and Energy Engineering at the Entrepreneurial School®. Since then, employees and students of the department have been researching how waste and residual wood can be used to produce not only renewable energy but also a valuable by-product, namely powdered activated carbon. This waste and residual wood comes mainly from landscape conservation and municipal collection.

They are also investigating the potential uses of activated carbon in municipal infrastructure, for example as an adsorbent for the removal of drug residues from wastewater. In this context, the employees and students are primarily trying to find out which surface properties the activated carbon must have for highly efficient removal of trace substances and how this can be achieved in the production of the activated carbon. An extensive test program at the wastewater treatment plants of the participating municipal utilities is to prove the suitability of this special activated carbon.

In this research work, not only electricity and heat can be generated from municipal residual materials, but at the same time a high-quality additional product is produced which can be returned to the local material cycle.

The Josef Ressel Center was established for a period of five years at the department and named after the Austro-Bohemian forestry official and inventor Josef Luwdig Franz Ressel (1793-1857).

The research center is supported by the Christian Doppler Forschungsgesellschaft and the corporate partners SynCraft Engineering, Innsbrucker Kommunalbetriebe AG, Stadtwerke Schwaz and Gemeindewerken Telfs.