OUR APPROACH

The FOKUS:INNOVATION project emphasises innovation processes of regional companies and links them with the Technical State Museum of Mecklenburg-Vorpommern (TLM MV).

WHAT IS IT ABOUT?

The TLM MV presents historical innovations and pioneering achievements in the history of technology and industry at the phanTECHNIKUM in Wismar, focussing on Mecklenburg-Vorpommern. However, regional achievements are not limited to historical milestones. Even today, there are numerous companies, start-ups and initiatives based in MV that are actively shaping our future with innovative ideas. In order to increase their visibility, a variety of projection surfaces are necessary and possible.

As a third place, the museum reaches a heterogeneous society directly, sensitises people to regional and sustainable answers to global issues and transports this experience into the public's living rooms.

THE PROJECT

The FOKUS:INNOVATION exhibition project is a hybrid, modular exhibition system with constantly changing content, whose changing themes are presented in the form of cabinet exhibitions. The presentation space is the phanTECHNIKUM exhibition centre of the Mecklenburg-Vorpommern Technical State Museum.

The FOKUS:INNOVATION project was funded in 2024 as part of the ‘TRANSFORM_D - Social Cohesion’ funding programme of the German Foundation for Commitment and Volunteering.

OBJECTIVE

Controversial discourses on technical achievements are as old and legitimate as their use. As third places, museums in particular offer participation areas for a heterogeneous public with constantly changing demands. Empirical studies have shown that museums have a considerable influence on their audiences: museum content is no longer just passively consumed or uncritically accepted, but is rather processed in an active process in the museum and life experience of the audience.

For this reason, the Technical State Museum of Mecklenburg-Vorpommern aims to highlight and present current technical innovation processes in Mecklenburg-Vorpommern in the fields of business and industry, start-ups and business creation, science and research. By highlighting future utilisation horizons and areas of application for the corresponding innovations, we enter into an active exchange with our museum audience and, on the basis of facts and scientific data, promote objective debates about necessary changes as well as concrete and real-life incisions for each individual in connection with the major challenges of our time.

Everything revolves around regional responses to global issues relating to globalisation, demographic change, population growth, artificial intelligence, sustainability, climate change and climate impact adaptation. How do we want to live in the future? How do we want to work and live in the future? What will we pass on to future generations and how will the baton be passed on as part of the generational transition?

The FOKUS:INNOVATION project creates a link between the historical collection of the Mecklenburg-Vorpommern State Museum of Technology and current technical achievements and innovative impulses and, as a place to raise awareness, offers opportunities to engage in an active and safe dialogue with developments.

By juxtaposing historical patent highlights and their developments with contemporary issues of global sustainability, this process is brought together in the museum in analogue and digital form and opened up to a wide audience. In the field of tension between greenwashing and greenbashing, the project counters populist trends and focuses on the challenges, processes and areas of application of the leaps in innovation.

BUILD BLUE

Build Blue is a start-up company from Niendorf on the island of Poel, which has dedicated itself to insulation from the Baltic Sea. Behind this is a raw material whose processing and application horizon is not new, but is experiencing a renaissance in terms of modern and sustainable aspects of procurement, processing and use: seagrass.

PEOPLE BEHIND THE IDEAS

Build Blue is the brainchild of school friends and partners Vincent Marnitz and Rico Wegner. Vincent is an economist and already a successful founder, brings entrepreneurial expertise to the project and is the sole shareholder of the company. Rico is an industrial mechatronics engineer and enriches the company with technical knowledge.

Vincent Marnitz first became involved with the topic of seagrass in 2022. The idea won an award from the Raiffeisen Society in November 2022. Since 2023, the two partners have been working on their plan to utilise the raw material seagrass on their own doorstep as an insulating material. To this end, the two are utilising various collaborations, the foundations of which were laid in 2023. The two young entrepreneurs' project was honoured by the Federal Ministry of Economics in December 2024 with the “Kultur- und Kreativpilot Deutschland” award.  

At the UN Climate Change Conference in Paris in December 2015, 197 countries agreed on a new global climate protection agreement. As of September 2018, this has already been ratified by 180 countries.

At the heart of the agreement are three key targets:

• The states set themselves the global goal of limiting global warming to well below two degrees Celsius compared to the pre-industrial age with efforts to limit it to 1.5 degrees Celsius.
• The ability to adapt to climate change is to be strengthened and established as an equally important goal alongside the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions.
• In addition, the flow of financial resources is to be harmonised with the climate targets.

According to a 2020 UN report, the construction and building industry is at a record high in terms of greenhouse gas emissions. The sector now accounts for 38 per cent of global CO² emissions.

The growing global demand for raw materials is also accompanied by a significant shortage of primary raw materials. As the construction sector accounts for a significant proportion of raw material consumption, the resource-efficient circular economy is becoming increasingly important in securing the supply of raw materials. Contrary to the importance shown, the high-quality utilisation of mineral construction waste or the reuse of fully functional components is not yet established across the board. This is reflected in a recent statistic from the Federal Environment Agency, according to which over 90% of insulation materials in house construction are produced from non-biological materials, mostly crude oil-based, and are therefore not reusable.

Until the 1950s, seagrass was used as a natural insulating material. If, on the other hand, seagrass is only regarded as waste, as is common today, it causes high disposal costs. Collecting, transporting and dumping it ties up a lot of human and financial resources. According to surveys carried out in Wismar Bay in 2003, a mass of 200 m³ of flotsam, including seagrass, incurs disposal costs of around €17,600 per kilometre of beach per bathing season.

Build Blue is taking responsibility, cooperating with the municipality of Ostseebad Insel Poel and aims to promote the renaissance of seagrass as a building material. By accepting the waste material free of charge on the one hand and providing municipal operating areas on the other, a lively cooperation is being created on the holiday island.

Common seagrass (Zostera marina) is a plant species in the seagrass family and is found on almost all sea coasts in the northern hemisphere.

Seagrass meadows play a central role in the marine ecosystem. Seagrasses can live for several hundred years, stabilise the sediment on the seabed, store large amounts of carbon dioxide, release equally large amounts of oxygen and provide shelter and food for countless small animals. In the natural annual cycle, the leaves die off in autumn. The roots of the seagrasses overwinter and sprout anew in spring. The tufts of dead leaves that often wash up after storms are therefore a typical sight on local nature and bathing beaches.

Once stranded, seagrass is not primarily a raw material, but rather a beach clearance material. Only when it is collected and transported away does the flotsam become a waste material that has to be disposed of at great expense. The term ‘flotsam’ refers to organic substances that are mixed with mineral components such as stones, sand and mussel shells.

Build Blue wants to introduce the sustainable, ecological building material made from regional Baltic Sea driftwood from automated production ready for the market. The idea of cradle to cradle, a consistent and continuous circular economy, is being pursued. After being upgraded to a building material, the product is 100% recyclable and compostable.

An indoor climate like no other

As an insulating material, 1,000 kg of seagrass stores around 1,200 kg of CO² equivalent, resulting in a negative emissions balance.

Seagrass has a high silica content, which minimises the infestation of house dust mites. As an ecological building material, it is also resistant to mould and fungi. The high silicate content also prevents allergens from settling in.

In contrast to synthetic alternatives, seagrass can absorb and regulate moisture. This not only means a lower risk of mould growth, but also a room climate that literally breathes.

As an insulating material, the natural fibres of seagrass protect against both cold and heat. The material is also suitable as sound insulation. The degree of airborne sound absorption depends on the structure of the plant fibres. Its use as impact sound insulation is also currently being researched.

The DIN 4102-1 | 1998-05 standard defines fire protection terms, requirements, test methods and labelling for building materials at national level. This standard applies to the classification of the fire behaviour of building materials for assessing the risk as an individual building material and in combination with other building materials. The Build Blue product fulfils this standard in fire class B2. According to this standard, seagrass is normally flammable and can be equated with wood and wood-based materials.

The better the thermal conductivity of materials, the less suitable they are for insulation. Conversely, the worse the thermal conductivity of materials, the better the insulating effect. The thermal conductivity of seagrass is roughly equivalent to that of cellulose and wood fibre insulation boards.

The path to automated production still has to be travelled. In the prototyping phase, material acquisition started manually. A systematic approach enabled the young company to concretise its own requirements and activate partnerships. Moisture measurements in the drying chamber were carried out in the company's own garage, rent-free included. Each individual work step was tested several times so as not to lose sight of the company's approach to sustainable production for a sustainable product.

Build Blue now relies on close cooperation with the municipality of Ostseebad Insel Poel to process the material at the specified location. To this end, machinery was purchased in November 2024 to upgrade the waste product into a building material. This is done using a series of different screening processes with different mesh sizes to separate the material from other ingredients such as sand, stones, mussel shells and waste. The separation processes are coupled with drying processes in the form of unheated air blowers in order to save energy on the one hand and to gently upgrade the material before final shredding on the other.

After shredding, the natural raw material is supplied in big bags for installation. The installation of seagrass is comparable to that of other loose fill or blow-in insulation materials. Using suction and blow-in devices, the material is poured or blown from the big bag via hoses into the hollow bodies to be filled in the roof, ceiling and wall. The openings are then sealed. Due to the natural salt content of seaweed, it must always be ensured that structural components are protected against corrosion.

The areas of use and application of the product are divided into roof and ceiling insulation and wall insulation. Seagrass is used as insulation between rafters and as insulation in closed cavities between wooden beams. Exposed insulation is possible on horizontal surfaces that cannot be walked on. The material is suitable as cavity insulation between wooden beams in the floor area.

The application as insulation and insulating material in the wall area provides for space-filling insulation in closed cavities for interior and exterior walls in timber frame construction or comparable constructions.

In general, care must always be taken to ensure that the insulation layers are not subject to additional pressure loads and that they are installed in areas protected from moisture.

MILESTONES & SPRINTS

The idea of utilising the material lying on the beach was taken up by Build Blue in 2023. The first drying trials and machine tests took place in the garage at home at the end of 2023 in order to keep the costs of development low. For this purpose, historical source and reference material was reviewed and the procedure of already tested processes was adapted and refined. Build Blue's own process management was optimised through expert discussions with Bernd Anders, project coordinator of the ‘Life’ project (around 2004) from the Klützer Winkel district and by consulting the experience of the inactive ‘zostera dämm’ project of W.I.S. GmbH in Wismar.

Prototype construction of the drying, aeration, sieving and shredding systems began in spring 2024. The first small quantities of the finished product were produced so that assembly tests could be carried out in summer 2024. The building material was then certified and the first customers were acquired.

This was followed by endurance tests in late summer, which provided the basis for defining and procuring the machinery required for the project. The latter took place in November 2024 and the large machines were placed on the site of the local authority's building yard so that the mechanically collected seaweed could be utilised on site at the beginning of 2025.

In 2024, around 2,000 tonnes of sieved seaweed were deposited in the Baltic seaside resort of Boltenhagen at the end of the season. The municipality of Ostseebad Insel Poel has around 1,000 tonnes of screened seagrass at the end of the bathing season.

Build Blue's short-term objective is to move to largely automated production from 2025 and to utilise the seaweed deposits from the island of Poel and other regional locations. According to Build Blue, the amount of material produced is sufficient to supply around 25 private construction sites.

All Baltic seaside resorts clean their beaches and remove the flotsam. The problem here is the storage of the material at decentralised landfill sites, which has also posed challenges for similar projects in the past, including high transport costs. Build Blue is already responding to this and is planning the mechanical recycling park at other locations along the Baltic Sea coast in the medium term.

In the long term, the patented process will also be used internationally. In view of the high deposits of seagrass on the Mediterranean coasts, production as insulation material against high temperatures is just as plausible and a necessary measure for climate impact adaptation.

EXHIBIT

Become an exhibitor at the TLM MV and use the phanTECHNIKUM as a space for your innovations! Our museum offers unique opportunities to discuss your products, technologies and ideas with a diverse and interested audience and to present your innovations. With a special focus on Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, we place historical pioneering achievements and modern accomplishments centre stage - and show how regional companies are actively shaping the future.

Become part of our project and get your innovations talked about!

CONTACT

Phone: +49-(0) 3841-3045717
Mail: direktion@phantechnikum.de