Will the Hochschule Niederrhein (HSNR) soon be paving the way for an intelligent solution to make detergents greener and laundry washing even more environmentally friendly and energy-efficient?
At the very least, a research group from the Faculties of Chemistry and Electrical Engineering and Computer Science will be working over the next three years on a predictive model based on artificial intelligence (AI) that could produce a completely new control variable in enzyme technology. The "GreenProtAct" research project is being funded by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research with around 515,000 euros.
German households consume 500,000 metric tons of detergent each year. Enzymes have long been used to make laundry washing much more environmentally friendly: They manage at low temperatures, reduce product consumption and replace chemicals that are difficult to break down.
But chemical additives have so far been indispensable for the laundry process. For even greener laundry, the search is therefore on for bio-based alternatives that achieve a similarly high cleaning performance at low temperatures. Finding them, however, is proving difficult, as soil removal is only achieved through the cooperative interaction of all detergent ingredients. That could possibly change soon:
HSNR wants to identify sustainable additives that react optimally together with enzymes. These are taken from or modeled on nature - and are thus an environmentally friendly substitute for chemical additives. What makes them special, however, is that they act as "boosters" to give the proteins an additional boost in activity.
The knowledge gained by the research team from novel experiments using artificial intelligence could be groundbreaking for the cooperative use of biobased chemistry and enzymes.
That, however, is a complex undertaking that requires a lot of time and subject matter expertise. For the first time, therefore, the university's two affiliated institutes, HIT and ILOC, are joining forces. Specialists in enzyme technology, interfacial chemistry and machine learning are pooling their expertise to enable ideal interaction between sustainable auxiliaries and enzymes in dirt removal.
While the Institute for Surface Technology HIT uses artificial intelligence to identify suitable green excipients, the Institute for Coatings and Surface Chemistry ILOC measures and checks how they actually interact with enzymes.
BASF is a strong cooperation partner. The chemical company is testing the research results directly in washing trials.
Sedef Eyeoglu, who studied applied chemistry in the master's program at HSNR, is also conducting research on the scientific project. "This is a very exciting topic for the future. This basic research can help make the industry greener, but could also have long-term applications in areas other than detergents," says the 25-year-old, who will pursue a doctorate on the topic.
"The cooperation with HIT allows us to explore completely new avenues. Previously, I would not have thought it possible to elucidate the interactions of enzymes with individual substances in detergents," says Prof. Dr. Kerstin Hoffmann-Jacobsen. She is the project coordinator and conducts research on this in the field of biophysical chemistry. She hopes that the project will provide completely new insights into chemical enzyme regulation.
