Re- and upcycling of industrial silicon carbide and silicon nitride waste

The international cooperation project “TRANSFORM” was approved for a period of three years as part of the strategic project funding with the Republic of India under the participation of the Chair of Ceramic Materials, the University of Bayreuth and the company QSIL Ingenieurkeramik GmbH as well as the Indian Institute of Technology Madras (IIT Madras) and the company Carborundum Universal Limited (CUMI) as part of the 2+2 initiative of the Indo-German Science and Technology Centre.

The aim is to develop a process to recycle the significant quantities of expensive, high-quality material produced during the industrial green machining of silicon carbide and silicon nitride components. This powder is partially contaminated with ceramic foreign material or other substances. A targeted improvement of certain properties of the material is also planned. The waste powder for this project is provided by the companies QSIL and CUMI. In parallel, the University of Chennai is working on producing filaments suitable for additive manufacturing from the same powders. The modified powders from the universities are to be used by the aforementioned industrial partners to manufacture ceramic products.