Themenschwerpunkte: Moderne Walzstraßenkonzeptionen für neue Umformtechnologien und TMB-Strategien zur Herstellung von Walzdraht, Rechnergestützte Kalibrierung und Stichplanauslegung, Neue Technologien und Anlagen zum Ziehen von Draht, Anlagen und Technologien zur Wärmebehandlung von Draht, Umformtechnologien für neue Drahtwerkstoffe und Legierungen für Hochleistungsanwendungen, Prozessüberwachung und Qualitätssicherung in Prozessen der Drahtherstellung und -weiterverarbeitung, Mathematische Beschreibung der Umformprozesse und des Werkstoffverhaltens bei der Drahterzeugung und Weiterverarbeitung von Draht zu Anwendungen mit hohem Anforderungsprofil / Conference topics: Modern rolling plant concepts for new forming technologies and thermo-mechanical treatment of rolled wires, Computer-aided roll-pass design and pass schedule development, New technologies and equipments for wire drawing, Systems and technologies for the heat treatment of wire forming technologies for new alloys and materials accounting for high-demand wire applications, Process monitoring and quality assurance in wire production and processing, Mathematical modelling of the deformation process and material behaviour during wire production, Post-processing of wire for high-demand applications, and Wire-based additive manufacturing

Focusing on the selective extraction of the critical raw materials indium and germanium from real bioleaching solutions, extended studies have been carried out using Europe’s first underground hybrid membrane pilot plant (TRL6). In order to transfer former laboratory experiments to pilot scale, NF99 (Alfa Laval) was used for the evaluation of membrane permeance and ion retention. A performance test of microfiltration (MF) and nanofiltration (NF) showed high permeances with low root-mean-square deviation under feed variation (5.2% for MF, 4.7% for NF). Depending on the feed load, a significant permeance drop of up to 57% for MF (3 bar) and 26% for NF (10 bar, 1.1 m s−1) was observed. The NF retention performance showed that, without regular chemical cleaning, the selectivity between the target elements degraded. By introducing acidic-basic cleaning steps, it was possible to keep the retention behavior at an approximately constant level (In 91.0 ± 1.3%; Ge 18.2 ± 5.5%). In relation to the specified target, the best results could be achieved at low pressure (7.5 bar) and a maximum overflow velocity of 1.1 m s−1, with a retention of 88.4% for indium and 8.8% for germanium. Moreover, the investigations proved the functionality and long-term stability of the underground membrane device.