Technology Transfer Prize of the German Physical Society awarded to TUM
Climate-friendly energy from waste heat
Every day enormous quantities of energy go to waste in industry and the transportation sector. Waste heat is generated in production processes and by motors. To utilize this heat, a team at the TUM Chair of Energy Systems has developed a new technology that can be used to generate power in factories, combined heat and power (CHP) stations, on ships and in many other industrial processes.
The easy-to-install module uses a technology similar to that of traditional steam-driven turbines. Instead of water, however, it uses an organic fluid with a lower boiling point. This principle, referred to as the Organic Rankine Cycle (ORC), was used by the team to develop a technology that makes efficient use of small quantities of waste heat with relatively uncomplicated equipment.
More than 100 patents
The Patents and Licenses team in the TUM Office for Research and Innovation (ForTe) filed the first patent applications for the technology on behalf of TUM with the support of the Bavarian Patent Alliance. In 2008 Richard Aumann, Dr. Andreas Sichert and Dr. Andreas Schuster established Orcan Energy and acquired the patents. They now hold more than 100 patents and have since turned the start-up into a company with around 60 employees. Orcan Energy has already sold more than 200 modules worldwide that have generated a total of approximately 30 gigawatt hours of power with no CO2 emissions. This makes the company the world's leading supplier of ORC energy technology.
The DPG Technology Transfer Prize will be presented on March 31, 2020 at the annual conference of the German Physical Society in Bonn. In 2016 TUM selected the founders as the winners of its Presidential Entrepreneurship Award.
Every year TUM files patent applications for around 70 inventions by its scientists. TUM ForTe Patents and Licenses provides advice and support on protecting intellectual property rights and exploiting patents. Teams planning to launch new technologies on the market receive support from TUM and UnternehmerTUM, the Center for Innovation and Business Creation, which offer programs for every phase of the start-up process. The TUM Incubator can provide office space for up to 30 teams preparing launch companies. With its own UVC venture capital fund, UnternehmerTUM invests in promising technology companies and offers them access to MakerSpace and Bio.Kitchen, a 1,500 square meter high-tech workshop for building prototypes and a biotech laboratory. Every year more than 70 technology-based companies are established at TUM.
