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Winners of “Innovation Awards 2019”

Prize winners of the “Textile Structures for New Building”
An international jury of renowned civil engineers and architects awarded six prizes and two commendations to the "Textile Structures for New Buildings” competition award winners.
At Techtextil and texprocess, Frankfurt, the Techtextil Textile Research Centre for its ‘Textile Mining’ project,
Innovation Awards 2019 were presented on the first a functional textile that enables, for example,
day of the trade fairs to Seven winners for presenting companies from the metal industry to recycle and
new textile solutions for e-mobility, occupational safety recover noble metals, such as gold, platinum and
and greater sustainability during the opening palladium, from industrial waste water. Against the
ceremony. New this year, Techtextil honored two background of a growing shortage of raw materials,
award winners in the ‘Sustainability’ category. industrial waste water is, alongside electrical waste,
an important source of noble metals and, therefore,
Two awards in the ‘Sustainability’ category ‘urban mining’, i.e., separating and recovering raw
A Techtextil Innovation Award went to a working group materials from existing resources in urban settings.
comprising Comfil (Denmark), Chemosvit Fibrochem
(Slovakia), the Fraunhofer Institute for Chemical ‘New Application’ category
Technology ICT (Germany), the Technical University of the awards went to the German Institutes for Textile
Denmark and Centexbel (Belgium) for “BIO4SELF”, and Fibre Research Denkendorf (DITF) and Beira
fully bio-based, self-reinforced polymer composites Interior University (DCTT) in Portugal. DITF have
based on PLA Fibres. These composites can be used developed a space-saving inductive charging coil for
in the fields of automobile manufacturing, sports hybrid and electric vehicles.
industry and medical technology. They also contribute to
the sustainability goals defined by the United Nations. The second award went to the E-Caption 2.0 smart
and safe coat developed by the Beira Interior
The second award in the sustainability category went University in Portugal. The coat is primarily designed
to PICASSO, a joint venture of Portuguese project to protect workers from excess radio-frequency
partners for the development of a coloration and signals while climbing antennas. Protection is given
functionalization process for garments based on by a textile system that harvests energy and is
natural extracts from residues and/or species of connected to LEDs that indicate when the radiation level
mushrooms and plants, as well as enzymes. exceeds that recommended by the European Union.

‘New Technology’ category ‘New Material’ category
Robert Bosch GmbH and H. Stoll AG were presented The award went to Portugal’s Sedacor cork
with the Techtextil Innovation Award for a knitted processing company for CORK-A-TEX, a new yarn
sensor glove. The seamless, 3D flat-knitted glove is made of cork. The new cork yarn is a flexible product
made of sensor yarn and offers the wearer sensory made of a natural material and thus offers additional
and control functions on all fingers. design opportunities for the fashion industry and
The second award went to Germany’s Northwest interior furnishing.

May/June 2019