Interzum 2017: Covestro won two of the coveted prizes

Rebecca Heil, Leiterin des Designer-Netzwerks bei Covestro, und Adam Pajonk, Mitglied des Teams von Designstudenten, erhielten einen interzum award für ihr InFoam Druckprojekt als „Best of the Best“. Dahinter links ist Katharina C. Hamma, Geschäftsführerin der KölnMesse, zu sehen.
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Rebecca Heil, who is in charge of the designer network at Covestro, and Adam Pajonk, a member of the team of design students, received an interzum award for their InFoam printing project in the “Best of the Best” category. In the background on the left-hand side is Katharina C. Hamma, Managing Director of KölnMesse.

Covestro receives two prizes as part of the interzum award

LEVERKUSEN, 18-May-2017 — /EuropaWire/ — At interzum 2017, the world’s leading trade show for interior design and furniture production, Koelnmesse in collaboration with Red Dot held it’s ninth annual design competition. At the award ceremony that kicked off the show, Covestro received not one, but two of the coveted prizes as part of the “interzum award: intelligent material & design”.

The jury of industry professionals selected the company for an award in both categories. The development of cardyon™, a sustainable raw material for flexible polyurethane foam, was honored with the “High Product Quality” prize, while the InFoam Printing project, which originated at the Covestro Makeathon at Münster University of Applied Sciences, was named “Best of the Best.”

Carbon dioxide as a useful synthesis building block
cardyon™ is a new Covestro raw material for flexible polyurethane foam that contains the greenhouse gas CO2. Up to 20 percent of the fossil raw materials used previously have been replaced by carbon dioxide in this product. A special catalyst lends the molecule the required reactivity.

Covestro brought a production plant for the raw material on stream at its site in Dormagen last year. Already available commercially, it is a precursor for foams used in mattresses and upholstered furniture.

Closing the carbon cycle
“By using the product as a synthesis building block, the CO2 is returned to the value chain and the carbon cycle closed,” said venture manager Dr. Berit Stange. “This also reduces the consumption of fossil resources. cardyon™ thus offers a solution for greater sustainability in the mattress value chain.”

A life cycle analysis showed that the carbon footprint of this polyurethane raw material can be reduced by up to 15 percent compared with a conventional precursor. Furthermore, the quality and characteristics of foams made with cardyon™ are easily on par with those of their purely petrochemical-based counterparts.

Creative design with plastics
Creative minds can be inspired to come up with completely new ideas if they are familiar with the properties of plastics. Covestro has therefore set itself the goal of imparting its product knowledge to designers while at the same time gaining a better understanding of their needs.

“In addition to existing contacts with industrial designers, we’re also increasingly approaching talented university students,” said Rebecca Heil, who is in charge of the designer network and idea.lab at Covestro. One special project aimed at encouraging this dialogue was the Covestro Makeathon, which the company held for the first time last year at Münster University of Applied Sciences.

Influencing specific foam properties
One of the results was an idea for the robot-assisted injection of polyurethane systems into flexible foams. The inventors of the process, Dorothee Clasen, Sascha Praet and Adam Pajonk, continued working on their idea as part of a collaboration project with Covestro. They researched how to produce structures inside foams and alter the properties of foams in specific spots.

This method could be used, for instance, to improve the properties of upholstered furniture and mattresses for sitting or lying down by providing different firmness levels in a single foam element.

Find out more
At Industrial Design Day, to be held during the event by the German Association of Industrial Designers (Verband Deutscher Industriedesigner – VDID), Rebecca Heil will be giving a presentation in Hall 4.2 at 3 p.m. on May 16 that also offers insight into this project.

Both award-winning developments will be on display in a special exhibition on interzum’s trade show boulevard and shown in the online exhibition at www.interzum-award.de.

About Covestro:
With 2016 sales of EUR 11.9 billion, Covestro is among the world’s largest polymer companies. Business activities are focused on the manufacture of high-tech polymer materials and the development of innovative solutions for products used in many areas of daily life. The main segments served are the automotive, electrical and electronics, construction and the sports and leisure industries. Covestro, formerly Bayer MaterialScience, has 30 production sites around the globe and employs approximately 15,600 people (full-time equivalents) as of the end of 2016.

Find more information at www.covestro.com and www.interzum-award.de.

Forward-Looking Statements
This release may contain forward-looking statements based on current assumptions and forecasts made by Covestro AG. Various known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors could lead to material differences between the actual future results, financial situation, development or performance of the company and the estimates given here. These factors include those discussed in Covestro’s public reports, which are available at www.covestro.com. The company assumes no liability whatsoever to update these forward-looking statements or to conform them to future events or developments.

SOURCE: Covestro AG

MEDIA CONTACT

Dr. Frank Rothbarth
Covestro Deutschland AG
External Communications / Trade press

Covestro Deutschland AG
51365 Leverkusen
Germany
Phone: +49 214 6009 2536
frank.rothbarth@covestro.com