Handing over the membership certificate of the Zuse Community to the Oel-Waerme-Institut: Dr. Wilfried Plum, Managing Director OWI (left), Dr.-Ing. Friedrich-Wilhelm Bolle, Member of the Presidium of the Zuse Community. Photo: Fabian Nawrath – FiW e.V.
09 January 2020 –
The Zuse community continues to grow. With the accession of the OWI Oel-Waerme-Institut gGmbH from Herzogenrath near Aachen, the nationwide association of non-profit research institutes now unites 75 members, seven of them in Aachen and a total of twelve in North Rhine-Westphalia. The membership certificate was officially handed over on January 8 by Dr. Friedrich-Wilhelm Bolle from the Presidium of the Zuse Community. The OWI is a research institute that works on the further development of conventional and alternative fuels and innovative efficiency technologies in cooperation with partners from industry and research.
“We expect that in the next few years, increasingly climate-friendly liquid fuels will come onto the market,” explained OWI Managing Director Elmar Pohl. “We are supporting this, for example, by developing new application-oriented methods and processes to maintain the operational reliability of technical systems such as engines and heating systems. In addition, we are also involved in the further development of efficiency technologies, for example on the basis of fuel cell systems. The goal of our application-oriented research is to develop technically mature, low-greenhouse gas and low-emission solutions for the heat generation and mobility of tomorrow.”
The OWI is an affiliated institute of the RWTH Aachen University and sees itself as a mediator between basic research and application. Within the scope of technology transfer, the OWI works on projects financed by public funds as well as industrial research contracts. “Under the current conditions of the German research landscape, non-profit and independent research institutes such as OWI do not have an easy time of it,” explains OWI Co-Manager Wilfried Plum. “Therefore, joining the Zuse community is a logical step for OWI. This platform bundles similar interests and contributes to research policy and funding.
Dr. Bolle, who is Managing Director of the Research Institute for Water and Waste Management at RWTH Aachen University (FiW), explains: “With its know-how in fuel research, the OWI contributes important expertise to our network for the implementation and optimization of the energy system transformation as a central social task. We are pleased to have gained another ally in OWI for our central concern of more fairness in research funding,” Dr. Bolle emphasized. The Zuse Community represents the interests of non-profit, privately organized industrial research institutions. The association, which is open to technology and industry, includes 75 institutes nationwide. As practical and creative idea generators for German SMEs, they translate scientific findings into applicable technologies and thus prepare the ground for innovations that make German SMEs successful worldwide.
