Im Rahmen der BMBF-Fördermaßnahme “KI-Anwendungshub Kunststoffverpackungen – nachhaltige Kreislaufwirtschaft durch Künstliche Intelligenz" werden Methoden der Künstlichen Intelligenz (KI) dazu genutzt, die Nachhaltigkeit von Kunststoffverpackungen zu verbessern – entlang der gesamten Wertschöpfungskette von Design bis zum erneuten Eintreten in den Kreislauf.
Packaging accounts for by far the largest proportion of plastic waste worldwide. Due to technical and economic challenges that are often too great, only a small proportion of the plastic is returned to the cycle as a secondary raw material. The AI application hub for plastic packaging aims to use artificial intelligence (AI) to pave the way for a sustainable circular economy.
In order to close the loop for plastic packaging as far as possible, 51 partners from business, science and society are working together in two innovation labs: KIOpti-Pack for design and production and K3I-Cycling for material recycling. An important goal is the cross-laboratory exchange of data in order to consider findings across the entire value chain. In addition, the hub’s topics relating to artificial intelligence and the circular economy for plastics are to be made accessible to the general public through a variety of events and communication measures. Among other things, a podcast and an Open Hub Day are planned for this purpose.
About the innovation labs:
KIOptiPack – Holistic AI-based optimization of plastic packaging with recycled content
The aim of KIOptiPack is to provide, validate and transfer practical AI-supported tools for successful product design and the quality-compliant production of plastic packaging with a high proportion of recycled materials in an AI application and data room. This will be linked to the creation of a central network platform for value chain engineering. The project and the tools developed within it cover the entire value chain from secondary raw materials, material and packaging development, process design and packaging production through to waste collection and processing.
Coordination: Institute for Plastics Processing at RWTH Aachen University
Term: 01.08.2022 – 31.07.2025
K3I-Cycling – AI-supported optimization of the recycling of plastic packaging
The aim of K3I-Cycling is to significantly improve the quantity and quality of material recycling of post-consumer plastic packaging waste. To this end, K3I-Cycling is using an Artificial Neural Twin to develop a new, open and standardizable AI interface for the cross-sector collection of relevant information in the sense of a lightweight packaging product passport. This enables the digital networking of all stakeholders along the value chain for the first time. An artificial neural twin is a fully differentiable representation of the overall system that can be used to optimize individual components in relation to the entire system. Sensory information of all kinds along the material flow is recorded as data.
Coordination: Fraunhofer Institute for Integrated Circuits IIS
Term: 01.09.2022 – 31.08.2025
→ Further information: Research for sustainability
Cover photo: Fraunhofer IVV
