German Company Plans to Develop New Rare Earth Recycling Technology

Recently, the German biotechnology and green chemistry company Bioweg UG announced that it has received 1.5 million euros in funding from the German government to develop technology for recovering rare earth elements (REEs) from wastewater. The project is being conducted in collaboration with the Technical University of Berlin.

This funding comes from the "Technology Metals Transformation Challenge" program initiated by the German Innovation Agency. According to Bioweg, the program aims to "develop and validate innovative processes for recovering critical metals from complex waste streams, including the use of selective water-based methods to obtain high-purity outputs suitable for downstream applications."

Pratik Maharwal, co-founder and CEO of Bioweg, stated, "This funding will enable us to accelerate our collaboration with the Technical University of Berlin to develop a sustainable, biotechnology-based rare earth recycling platform. This platform builds on Bioweg's expertise in fermentation technology based on waste streams and green chemistry, which can scale up our capabilities that have already been widely applied in bacterial cellulose production."