DLR makes the economy successful through research There is no innovation without business partners. Valuable technological knowledge and expertise is acquired at DLR every day. However, commercial products, services or processes are offered to the market by DLR’s cooperation partners. The spectrum ranges from small and medium-sized companies to start-ups and large industrial enterprises. DLR ...

Prototype quantum computers of different architectures Quantum computers are a key technology for the future. Not only are they significantly faster in specific fields of application, but they also open the door to possible applications that cannot be achieved by conventional supercomputers. Their use is possible, for example, in the transport and energy sectors, as ...

Emission-free and congestion-reducing delivery in city centres The EU project Interreg North-West Europe (NWE) is testing Fuel Cell Cargo Pedelecs (FCCP). The focus is on using them to deliver packages in inner cities. Compared to other propulsion technologies such as batteries, fuel cells offer the advantage of a longer range, extended daily use and short ...

Technologies for low-carbon industrial processes – Process heat using renewable sources Reducing carbon dioxide emissions is an extremely complex task, especially in industrial processes. This is because most plants and processes require either high or low temperatures. At present, fossil fuels are primarily used to generate these temperatures. In the future, renewable energy sources will ...

HiFlex project generates solar heat for industrial processes In the EU HiFlex (High storage density solar power plant for Flexible energy systems) project, DLR is developing and constructing a special process heat plant together with partners from industry. Its central element is a solar thermal tower power plant. The pilot plant is being built at ...

Rotating ceramic particles for higher temperatures in solar tower power plants In a solar tower power plant, numerous flat, sun-tracking mirrors – referred to as heliostats – focus sunlight onto a receiver at the top of a tall tower. The technology of the new centrifugal receiver CentRec, developed at the Institute of Solar Research uses ...

Sustainable aviation fuels for climate-neutral air transport Power-based fuels are indispensable for sustainable aviation. Particularly on medium- and long-haul routes, there are currently no technological alternatives to liquid fuels. At the same time, a large part of the harmful climate and environmental impact of air transport occurs on these routes. Power-based fuels (Power-to-Liquid, PtL) are ...

What forces act on a wind energy rotor blade? Rotor blade research at the Krummendeich Wind Energy Research Farm DLR’s Krummendeich Wind Energy Research Farm (WiValdi), which is currently under construction, will have two large wind turbines. They will be equipped with innovative research sensor technologies, which will mainly be located in the rotor blades ...

Full-scale research makes wind power more efficient, cheaper and quieter Together with partners from the Research Alliance Wind Energy, DLR is constructing a Wind Energy Research Farm referred to as WiValdi – Wind Validation. The location is Krummendeich in Lower Saxony. The research farm is scheduled to go into operation in the course of 2022. ...

AI-based platform for the development of sustainable materials The company ExoMatter is setting out to revolutionise materials development. The cloud-based platform combines data from public databases with its own scientific data and processes it through data mining. Artificial intelligence (AI) methods are used to add missing data. With its ‘Materials-Research-as-a-Service’ approach, ExoMatter digitalises the important ...

The next generation of solar thermal parabolic trough power plants Parabolic trough power plants convert solar energy into heat and then into electricity. To do this, they concentrate the sunlight with long mirror troughs arranged in rows. With the energy of the Sun, they heat thermal oil, which is located in a pipe positioned along ...