Treasure from the Deep - Evonik Industries · sources (BGR), which is headquartered in Ha-nover,...

1| 2008

Evonik Magazine 1 |2008

Evonik Magazine

Treasure from the DeepManganese and other ores can meet tomorrow’s need for raw materials

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We are committed to culture. Passionately so.

We care for fi ne art in the Ruhr Region.

215078_Bach_Bueste_220x270_ENG.indd 1 15.01.2008 10:17:23 UhrAnzeigen.indd 2Anzeigen.indd 2 13.02.2008 19:07:14 Uhr13.02.2008 19:07:14 Uhr

3EDITORIALEVONIK MAGAZINE 1/2008

Dear readers,

Tom Schimmeck knows the U.S. well from his many trips to the country and his numerous reports about it for newspapers and maga-zines. He loves the openness of the people he’s met in this “land of limitless opportuni-ties.“ One of them is Derrick Freeman, a barber he met in Hopewell, Virginia, when he was commissioned by Evonik Magazine to report on the Group’s major production

locations in Hopewell, Greensboro, and Mobile. After his trip of 2,000 kilometers, Shimmeck concludes: “The USA is a country that’s worth visiting again and again.“

Constanze Sanders is an expert on business topics, from overall economic statistics to goods logistics and the search for raw materials. She worked as a business journalist at Der Spiegel magazine for 15 years. Her office in Hamburg has a harbor view, and she’s particularly interested in maritime issues. That’s why she took on the assignment concerning raw materials from the ocean. She spent several weeks gathering information about the international search for raw materials on the ocean floor and tracking down the details in talks with numerous experts in the field.

Ideas are the stock in trade of Asli Sevindim, the Artistic Director of RUHR.2010. As a journalist and TV presenter, this lively young woman generates ideas almost nonstop, because she’s always on the move. Our author Catrin Krawinkel, though herself a fitness freak, had to work hard to keep up with Ms. Sevindim as they traveled through the Ruhr region and explored Essen on foot. Krawinkel reports, somewhat

breathlessly, “When you’re traveling with her you realize very quickly what the term ‘superwoman’ is all about.“

Pleasant reading!The editorial team of Evonik Magazine

Constanze Sanders

Tom Schimmeck at the Evonik

plant in Greensboro, North Carolina

Catrin Krawinkel

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In the Land of Limitless OpportunitiesEvonik Magazine reports on a journey across the U.S., on the race for raw materials from the ocean fl oor, and of course on activities associated with RUHR.2010

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6 DEEP SEA 32 RUHRFESTSPIELE

38 AMERICA 50 ASLI SEVINDIM


5CONTENTSEVONIK MAGAZINE 1/2008

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EDITORIAL 3 From the Heights to the Depths

RESEARCHING 6 Treasure from the DeepAt a depth of 5,000 meters, the seabed is rich in the raw materials that the world so urgently needs for further growth. Companies and researchers from around the globe are looking for ways to raise this treasure from the deep

INFORMING 22 Energy ConsumptionEvonik Magazine’s energy map not only shows how much primary energy is consumed by individual countries but also illustrates which nations would have to take the lead in cutting consumption

SHAPING 24 The InventorsAn inventive trio: in conjunction with Professor Paul Roth from the University of Duisburg-Essen, Dr. Andreas Gutsch and Dr. Gerhard Hörpel — both of whom work at Evonik Industries — created the modern lithium-ion battery

DEVELOPING 30 Saving Money and Protecting the Climate Using solar cells, geothermal energy, and an innovative environmentally friendly roofing tile, Evonik Industries is not only enabling people to cut their domestic bills, but also helping to protect the environment

EXPERIENCING 32 Kevin Spacey to Star in Ruhrfestspiele AgainThe Old Vic Theatre Company from London will once again participate in the Ruhrfestspiele — alongside many renowned stage actors from Germany and abroad

INFORMING 36 Evonik at Hannover MesseEvonik Industries AG will present its innovations at Hannover Messe this year. In Berlin and Brussels, the new German company introduced itself to ministers, business officials, and members of the German and European parliaments

TRAVELING38 On the Road AgainOn his trip through the U.S., Tom Schimmeck traveled all the way from New York to the deep south. Along the way, he visited historic sites and Evonik Industries’ state-of-the-art production plants

INSPIRING 50 Never a Dull MomentWriter, journalist, and TV host Asli Sevindim is always on the move. That’s been especially true since she became cultural director of RUHR.2010. One of her key tasks is to present the Ruhr region to its best advantage

DEBATING 56 Are Managers’ Salaries Too High?In Germany, high salaries for managers and low wage increases for employees have sparked a heated debate about remuneration for business leaders. Some experts have even suggested that salaries be curtailed by law

LIVING 58 Hooked on Virtual Reality Augmented reality is meant to create a closer link between the virtual and the real worlds. While some people are thrilled by its potential, others fear its impact. But the real question is: how will we deal with it in our daily lives?

Cover picture: Zircon, Manganese nodule, Tin

MASTHEAD Publisher: Evonik Industries AGChristian Kullmann Rellinghauser Str. 1–1145128 Essen Editor in Chief: Inken Ostermann (responsible for editorial content) Coordination Evonik: Ute BauerArt Direction: Wolf Dammann Final Editing (Head): Kurt Breme Managing Editor: Frauke MeyerPicture Desk: Ulrich Thiessen Documentation: Kerstin Weber-Rajab, Tilman Baucken; HamburgDesign: Teresa Nunes (Head), Anja Giese, Heike Hentschel,Nadine Weiler / Redaktion 4 Copy Desk: Wilm SteinhäuserTranslation: TransForm, ColognePublisher and address: HOFFMANN UND CAMPE VERLAG GmbH, a GANSKE VERLAGSGRUPPE company, Harvestehuder Weg 42 20149 Hamburg Telephone +49 (0)40 / 441 88-457, Fax -236, e-mail: [email protected] Management: Manfred Bissinger, Dr. Kai Laakmann, Dr. Andreas Siefke Publication Manager: Dr. Jessica Renndorfer Production: Claude Hellweg (Head), Oliver Lupp Lithography: PX2, Hamburg Printing: Laupenmühlen Druck, Bochum Copyright: © 2008 by Evonik Industries AG, Essen. Reprinting only with the permission of the publisher. The contents do not necessarily reflect the opinion of the publisher. Contact: Questions and suggestions on the contents of the magazine: Telephone +49 (0)201 / 177-3831, Fax -2908, e-mail: [email protected] about orders or subscriptions: Telephone +49 (0)40 / 68879-139,Fax -199, e-mail: [email protected] designations AEROSIL®, FAVOR®, SEPARION®, and STOKO® are registered trade-marks of Evonik Industries AG or its subsidiaries. All trademarks in the text are set in capitals.


Active black smoker

Energy from the SeaThe oceans hold vast amounts of raw materials and energy sources. With precious metals prices soaring, mining at depths of up to fi ve kilometers is attracting business interests — the battle for deep-sea prospecting rights is on

6 SHAPING DEEP SEA EVONIK MAGAZINE 1/2008


TEXT CONSTANZE SANDERS

HAWAII AND HANOVER aren’t as far apart as it seems — at least now that the Fed-eral Institute for Geosciences and Natural Re-sources (BGR), which is headquartered in Ha-nover, has leased ocean floor segments in an area stretching 4,000 kilometers across the Pacific. These segments, one of the richest raw material regions in the world, are littered with manganese nodules as big as potatoes (around two billion tons of ore in all). They could be vital for Germany’s economic sur-vival. “Our goal here is to help safeguard a fu-ture supply of raw materials,” says Hans-Joachim Kümpel, the new BGR president.

There is real concern in Germany about ensuring a reliable supply of basic materials. As a report published by the Federation of German Industries (BDI) in the spring of 2007 notes, “it is not only oil and gas that are of stra-tegic importance, but also metals.”

It currently takes around eight weeks for a piece of iron ore from a mine in Algeria to be transformed into the shiny hood of a mid-sized automobile, assuming the logistics chain operates smoothly and enough ore is avail-able. Delivery times are one uncertainty fac-tor, but prices are even more important, be-cause speculation and delivery delays can cause them to skyrocket suddenly. Such de-velopments have in fact led to a gold rush-like >PH

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Depth in meters Massive sulfides

The visible steam of minerals from a black smoker comes from the earth’s magma: cold seawater seeps through cracks in the earth’s crust and is heated by upward-flowing magma. At a temperature of approximately 400 degrees Celsius, it shoots up like a geyser, bringing metal along with it. Polymetallic sulfur compounds then sink to the ocean floor, where they become solid massive sulfide de-posits. Active black smokers can be found at depths of up to four kilometers along the margins of the continental plates, where they continually spew out valuable sub-stances containing lead, copper, zinc — and even gold and silver. Each of the currently known deposits consists of up to 100 million tons.

7


Brittlestar among manganese nodules

atmosphere on commodity exchanges. The price of copper, for example, has risen by 250 percent since 2000, while nickel prices have increased by 300 percent (see the graph on p. 18). The price increases have had a major im-pact: “Higher raw material costs have driven up prices for German industrial products by €90 billion over the last five years,” says Ul-rich Grillo, chairman of the BDI’s Interna-tional Raw Materials group.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel re-cently launched an initiative to counteract this development. “No matter where we go in the world, we often find that politicians from other countries have already been there and reached agreements that will supply their na-tions with raw materials for years to come,” says Merkel. The chancellor’s plan thus calls for German industrial firms to invest in re-search and mining companies in an effort to uncover and exploit new sources of raw ma-terials. One place where the materials can be found is on the ocean floor.

BGR researchers now have 15 years to de-termine which metals, and in what quantities, are contained in the manganese nodules in the Pacific. The institute will also develop technologies that will enable companies to profitably extract minerals in an environ-mentally friendly manner from a depth of 5,000 meters. “We’re not interested so much in the manganese itself but rather in the

Deep-sea ore: This manganese nodule resembles a caulifl ower

One nodule — a lot of metal

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roughly three percent of its content that’s made up of copper, nickel, and cobalt,” ex-plains BGR oceanographer Carsten Rühle-mann. “World market prices for these metals are a thousand times higher than the price of manganese.”

A BUSINESS WORTH BILLIONSIt is believed that the ocean floor segment leased by Germany contains up to 24 million tons of valuable metals. At $28,000 (€19,000) per ton of nickel (as of January 2008), the materials could be worth billions. With such high prices “a new cost calcula-tion can be made,” says BGR project man-ager Michael Wiedicke-Hombach, meaning that lower prices in the past didn’t justify the high mining costs.

Ore crusts contain even more valuable metals than are found in manganese nod-ules. They contain gold, silver, platinum, and rare earth metals. The latter are not rare per se, but rather difficult and costly to ex-tract from the natural compounds in which they are embedded. Like manganese nod-ules, ore crusts are formed by hydrothermal circulation, but in different ocean regions. More specifically, they are found at the mid-ocean ridges that span the globe (where the plates that form the ocean floor are drifting apart), and on the plate margins (where the plates slide underneath one another), be-PH

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8 DEEP SEA EVONIK MAGAZINE 1/2008SHAPING


As much as ten million years old, these po-tato-sized ore chunks have formed concentri-cally around a core. Their metal content varies. The most interesting deposits, from a busi-ness perspective, contain (in percent) manga-nese (29), iron (6), silicon (5), aluminum (3), nickel (1.4), copper (1.3), cobalt (0.25), ox-ygen (1.5), hydrogen (1.5), sodium (1.5), calcium (1.5), magnesium (0.5), potassium (0.5), titanium (0.2), and barium (0.2). These ore fields were discovered by scientists and cartographers on the HMS Challenger, a ship with onboard labs that sailed around the world in the 1870s. Today, manganese nodule fields are easily identified using underwater photos. Biologists on the submersible Nautile took this photo to advocate protection of these habitats.

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Diving for coveted raw materials

Nautilus Minerals, a Canadian company specializing in deep-sea mineral research and mining, collaborated with the company Placer Dome to study the ocean fl oor in the Suzette Field off the coast of Papua New Guinea. The partners used a remote-controlled diving robot to map the seabed. The robot was also equipped with a pair of gripping pliers, which took rock samples for analysis

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lantis II, a deep-sea trench between the conti-nents, likely contains the earth’s biggest min-eral treasure chest — thousands of tons of gold, silver, copper, and zinc. The value of the de-posits there was estimated to be nearly $3 bil-lion at the time. Located two kilometers be-low the sea, it currently awaits an investor.

A NEW GOLD RUSHResearchers from IFM-Geomar have also been diving and studying the ocean floor — most recently in the fall of 2007 with col-leagues from around the world, with whom they discovered ore deposits at the foot of Stromboli Island near Sicily. “Commercial ex-ploitation hasn’t been considered yet,” says Sven Petersen, head of the research team. That’s because the quantities discovered to date are insufficient. Still, Neptune Minerals of the UK, one of the world’s leading pros-pecting firms, has requested a license from the Italian government to mine in the region. The pioneer of commercial deep-sea mining is a Canadian company, Nautilus Minerals, which leased an inactive hydrothermal field from the government of Papua New Guinea in 1997. The field is at a depth of 1,600 me-ters in the Bismarck Sea.

The black smokers have concentrated raw material reserves over millions of years, which is why scientists are drawing up de-posit maps, examining environmental condi-

tions, testing equipment, and taking samples. “Nautilus uses the research results of German institutes,” says Herzig, who directed initial sample drilling near Papua New Guinea. “We’ve demonstrated to industrial compa-nies that such mining is possible.”

Nautilus went public in 2006, gaining strong financial partners as investors, in-cluding Metalloinvest, one of Russia’s big-gest iron ore producers, and Anglo American, the world’s second-largest mining company. Deep-sea mining is slated to begin in 2009.

To drill in international waters, a license must be obtained from the International Sea-bed Authority (see the box on p. 21). The au-thority can only monitor the activities of the private firms operating off Papua New Guinea, mainly as a means of benefiting from the com-panies’ technological advances. It can’t inter-fere in operations, however, because the li-censes were issued by the country’s government for an area within its 200 sea-mile exclusive economic zone. Papua New Guinea generates more than 80 percent of its export income from the sale of minerals, and the country is far from a role model for envi-ronmental protection.

“What we’re facing here is a no-holds-barred gold rush,” says Christian Neumann, marine conservation officer at the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF). Whereas the mining firms are primarily interested in the >

cause circulating water is continually depos-iting metallic particles in these areas.

“The ocean basins are like pails with holes,” says geologist Peter Rona of Rutgers University in New Jersey. “That’s because the volcanic rock in the earth’s crust under the ocean floor is constantly breaking up.” What happens is that water seeps into the earth’s hot interior and then shoots out again into the cold ocean at high pressure and a temperature of 400 degrees Celsius, spewing out metal sul-fide particles from the underlying rock in the process. The resulting funnels appear as what are called “black smokers”: solid sulfur com-pounds (massive sulfides) rise up in funnels several meters high and then collapse over thousands of years, leaving in their wake tre-mendous mountains of ore on the ocean floor. “They contain everything our industrialized societies need,” says Peter Herzig, director of the Leibniz Institute of Marine Sciences (IFM-Geomar) at the University of Kiel. The sub-stances present include copper (for use with electronic components), nickel and zinc (steel forging), valuable indium (a soft silver-white metal used in flat screens and LEDs), and even gold, which can be added to a nation’s re-serves. There are currently about 150 known active black smokers. The first of the result-ing mineral deposits was discovered 40 years ago in the northern Red Sea, where Africa and the Arabian Peninsula are drifting apart. At-

Continued on page 18

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Shallow-water mineralsSeabed mining has a long tradition in coastal regions, where rock consisting of minerals, lime, and detritus is processed to extract phosphate, which is a good fertilizer and an ingre-dient in cosmetics and Coca-Cola. Rich deposits on Nauru Island are now depleted, while huge reserves of up to 35 million tons of phosphate can be found east of New Zealand and off India. The ocean apparently replenishes itself. Indonesia and Thailand are now min-ing tin ore in coastal waters, and half of all Indonesian exports originate in the Java Sea. De Beers of South Africa, the major diamond company, is mining gemstones at a depth of just 200 meters off the coast of Namibia (annual revenue: $250 million). These stones account for nearly half of the company’s production. De Beers is also expanding mining operations on the South African shelf. The minerals were brought to the coast over a period of 40 million years by the Oranje River, which separates South Africa and Namibia.

SHAPINGDEEP SEAEVONIK MAGAZINE 1/2008 11


The manganese claimsThe Clarion-Clipperton zone in the manganese nodule belt of the Pacific Ocean between Hawaii and Mexico covers around five million square kilometers at depths reaching 5,000 meters. Clarion and Clipperton are the nearest uninhabited islands to the north and south. Following international conferences, the International Seabed Authority (ISA) specified borders between the claims on geological maps.

License holders:

• COMRA — China Ocean Mineral Resources Research and Development Association, Beijing, People’s Republic of China

• DORD — Deep Ocean Resources Development Company — Japanese government and around 50 companies

• The country of South Korea

• IFREMER — Institut français de recherche pour l’exploitation de la mer, French Research Institute for Exploitation of the Sea

• Interoceanmetal Joint Organization — governmental cooper-ation between Bulgaria, Cuba, the Czech Republic, Poland, Russia and Slovakia founded in 1987 and based in Poland

• Yuzhmorgeologiya — state research center of the Russian Ministry of Natural Resources

• BGR — German Federal Institute for Geological Sciences and Raw Materials, Hanover

• ISA – International Seabed Authority reservations

BauxiteAluminium ore

CobaltHigh-carbon steel, saw blades, magnets

DiamondsIndustrial drills, jewelry

IronSteel, chemicals

PetroleumEnergy, chemicals, cosmetics

GoldBars, jewelry, electronics

IlmeniteOpaque pigment titanium white

CoalPower plants, blast furnaces

CopperElectrical industry,

alloys

ManganeseSteel and steel materials,

batteries

NickelSteel, electroplating, consumer electronics

PlatinumLaboratory apparatus,

jewelry, catalysts

SilverElectrodes, cutlery,

mirrors

TitaniumAerospace, submarine building,

prostheses

TinCans, anti-fouling agent

in paint

ZirconCeramics for sinks, dental

prostheses, jewelry

A Wealth of Raw MaterialsAs the demand for raw materials increases rapidly, many deposits on land are becoming depleted. The seabed is rich in reserves such as oil, natural gas, and versatile metals

Key

Silver

Bauxite

Gold

Barites

Coal

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Lime sludge,sand, shell residue

Chromite

Copper

Diamonds

Iron, iron oxide

Zinc

Mercury

Potash

Monazite

Fresh water

Tin

Ilmenite, rutile(titanium-iron ore, titanium oxide)

Uranium

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Zircon

Sodium chloride

Phosphorite

Polymetallic sulfi des(black smokers)

Manganese nodule fi elds

Mid-ocean ridges

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Platinum

Rare earths

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Who Owns the Sea?Throughout history, people have coveted the sea’s riches — a chronicle

1494 Pope Alexander VI approves the Treaty of Tordesillas (Spain) that splits the world’s oceans between Portugal and Spain.

1609 In his work titled Mare Liberum, the Dutch theologian and jurist Hugo Grotius formulates the principle of the freedom of the seas. It stipulates that everyone can fish and navigate the oceans wherever they like. Later, countries also gain the right to dump materials and lay cables in the sea. Overflight rights are added in the 20th century.

1703 The jurist Cornelius van Bynkershoek stipulates the limit of maritime dominion as the effective range of a cannon (approxi-mately three nautical miles*), which then serves as the definition of the extent of a country’s territorial waters.

1930 Several countries express their desire to extend their national claims to incor-porate fishing grounds and natural resources. The League of Nations holds a conference in The Hague, but no agreement is reached.

1945 As a result of pressure from the American oil industry, President Harry S. Truman extends U.S. control to all the natural resources of its continental shelf.

1947 Offshore oil drilling commences in the Gulf of Mexico.

1954 Drilling now extends to a depth of four kilometers. Marine resources attract the interest of growing numbers of investors: diamonds in South Africa, tin in Indonesia, gravel for construction purposes, fishing grounds. The seas are rich in resources that appear to be inexhaustible.

1958 The first international convention on sea rights is signed in Geneva. The convention serves as a “constitution” of the seas. Its four treaties regulate maritime activities such as shipping, fishing, and deep-sea mining:

• On the continental shelf (coastal waters down to a depth of 200 meters)

• In the 12-mile zone* (plus a permissible contiguous zone out to 24 nautical miles*)

• Fishing in the Exclusive Economic Zone (out to 200 nautical miles*)

• The convention confirmed the freedom of the seas in the international waters beyond these zones.

1960 New technologies help companies ex-ploit the ocean depths. The rivalry for these riches intensifies. The Second Conference on

the Law of the Sea concludes without any concrete result.

1967 Arvid Pardo, Permanent Representa-tive of Malta to the United Nations, holds a three-hour speech at the UN, during which he paves the way for the laws of the sea that are still in force today. Pardo argues that the freedom of the seas destroys natural resources, and proposes that the common heritage of mankind should have priority.

1973-1982 The negotiators at the Third UN Conference on the Law of the Sea agree that the oceans’ resources should be managed for the benefit of mankind, that the environment should be preserved, and that the common heritage should be shared with future genera-tions and used solely for peaceful purposes. As a result, no country can claim the seabed for its own. The International Seabed Author-ity (ISA) is established to control seabed ac-tivities in international waters.

1994 The United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) goes into force. The ISA commences operations in Kingston, Jamaica. In 2007, the ISA has 155 member countries. These include all countries of the European Union, but not Turkey, Venezuela or the U.S.

AUGUST 8, 2007 The race to the North Pole begins. Until then, the North Pole had been considered to lie in international waters. A Russian research submersible plants the coun-try’s flag on the sea floor at a depth of about 4,200 meters. Russia lays claim to the Arctic Ocean and its vast reserves of natural re-sources, including an estimated 25 percent of global oil and gas reserves, as well as deposits of tin, manganese, diamonds, nickel, and gold.

According to Article 76 of UNCLOS, a coun-try has a ten-year period from the time of ratification to make claims that its continental shelf extends into international waters. For Russia, this period extends until 2009. Terri-torial claims are also being made by Canada, Norway, Denmark, and the U.S.

* ONE NAUTICAL MILE = 1.852 KILOMETERS

A Russian research submersible plants the country’s fl ag on the seafl oor at a depth of about 4,200 meters. Russia lays claim to the Arctic Ocean and its vast reserves of natural resources

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No simple legal matter: the law of the sea has complicated regulations for determin-ing which natural resources can be used by which country

International waters

One nautical mile = 1.852 km

Continental shelf

ExclusiveEconomic Zone200 nautical miles

Contiguous zone up to 12 nautical miles

Territorial waters 12 nautical miles

Internal waters

Baselinefor the measurement of zones

Jurisdictionup to 24 nautical miles

Land



“Soft” Mining Technology NeededThe environmental impact of deep-sea mining is still too great

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THE MINING SYSTEM glides through the dark waters without touching the seafloor, while its grab carefully picks manganese nodules out of the silt. Mean-while, high-pressure water pumps trans-port the valuable nodules 5,000 meters up to a ship lying at anchor on the surface.

That, at least, is how engineers and bi-ologists from some international compa-nies envisage mining on the seabed. Given that five kilograms of manganese nodules could be collected from each square meter of seafloor, a mining machine could eco-nomically collect 5,000 tons of ore from one square kilometer of seabed a day.

However, we still don’t have technolo-gies that would enable us to exploit these treasures — especially if companies also aim to avoid inflicting long-term damage on the seafloor’s ecosystems. “So far we can only simulate such a mining process,” says deep-sea expert Gerd Schriever from the Biolab Research Institute in Hohen-westedt, Germany. A team from Japan has tested systems developed in the 1970s that involve a ship towing a dragline. The re-sults were not encouraging, as the dragline

tended to get out of control and damaged the seabed. Bucket-chain dredgers that continuously haul manganese nodules to the surface between two ships also had a serious impact on the environment.

But there is hope that the difficulties can be overcome using high-pressure sys-tems or pumps that employ a self-propelled tracked vehicle and flexible conveyor hoses. Meanwhile, China has designed a harvesting device that would use a hydrau-lic drive to suck the nodules from the sea-bed. The system would also be equipped with a mill so that it could immediately grind the ore in the ocean depths.

DEEP-SEA MINING CONGRESSIn view of these developments, German engineers are aiming to develop improved measuring systems and sensitive controls. “We want to harvest the nodules without having to touch the seabed,” says Johannes Post from the maritime technology com-pany Hydromod in Hanover. “The collec-tor will have to maintain a specified dis-tance from the seafloor.” Post is designing a floating collector that separates the man-ganese nodules from the silt, which is in-jected back into the sea along with the mi-

crobes it contains. The goal is to keep the water column clean. Other technicians are considering a mobile system.

“About 50 to 60 systems could be in use at the same time,” says Schriever. If each unit covers a square kilometer of sea-bed each day, the systems could harvest an area about the size of Massachusetts each year. Although this might sound like a great deal, the abyssal plains are vast, cov-ering an area larger than all of the earth’s continents combined.

The littoral states would be responsi-ble for smelting the raw materials col-lected from the seabed. However, 85 per-cent of the 5,000 tons of manganese nodules collected each day would be left over as waste. “No one has so far consid-ered whether this waste material might be toxic,” says Schriever. To discuss possible technologies for deep-sea mining, re-searchers and managers from German and foreign high-tech refineries and mining companies will meet with government of-ficials for a conference at Aachen Univer-sity in early March. The participants will focus on the mining of manganese nod-ules, cobalt-rich crusts, massive sulfide deposits, and methane gas hydrates.

TEXT CONSTANZE SANDERS

How technicians envisage extracting natural resources from 5,000 meters down

Transport ship Production platform

Conveyor linewith pump

Silt cloud

Silt cloud

Manganese nodules collector

Manganese nodules

Production and transport ship with conveyor line, pump and self-propelled collector

1000 m interval

Manganese nodules

Seafl oor

Bucket-chain dredger: two ships pull an endless chain of buckets that continu-ously haul nodules of ore to the surface

Soft miner, featuring a fl oating collector, a conveyor line and a cable connecting it to the ship

Transport ship Production platform

Conveyor linewith pump

Silt cloud

Manganese nodule collector

Manganese nodules300 meter long dragline

Silt clouds

Seafl oor Seafl oor

17


metals they can find, biologists like Neumann are fascinated by the strange forms of life in the ocean depths — such as one-celled organ-isms that live off hydrogen sulfide, eyeless spider crabs, and numerous types of seashells and starfish. Many crustaceans, sponges, and anemones also live near manganese nodules. Damage to seabeds “as a consequence of min-ing activities is practically unavoidable,” ac-cording to a study conducted by the University of Hanover. That’s because mining machines rumple, crush, and disturb sediments, and also thrust particles into the water column. All this also disturbs the ecological balance in the lay-ers of water above. “It stirs up a huge amount of silt,” says Herzig. It takes years for life to re-turn to damaged areas, but after that it’s back to normal. “Still, that doesn’t mean there should be carte blanche approval for mining opera-tions,” Wiedicke-Hombach points out.

As early as 1975, a German partnership consisting of the BGR, Preussag, the Metall-gesellschaft conglomerate, and Salzgitter AG began studying the Pacific Ocean floor to-gether with companies from Canada, the U.S., and Japan. Metal prices fell following the en-ergy crisis, however, and many companies, in-cluding the German firms, gave up in despair, ultimately losing more than half a billion dol-lars in research costs.

Today, however, precious metals are in great demand. A computer, for example, requires at least 30 high-quality non-metallic and metallic elements, such as indium. This metal is becoming scarce because it can be extracted from zinc ore at only a few loca-tions worldwide. Zinc is present in abun-dance in deep-sea manganese nodules and ore crusts, however. Zircon, a versatile sili-cate mineral nearly as hard as diamond, which is currently extracted from beaches in Australia and South Africa, is also present in large quantities in ore crusts. When pro-cessed into zirconium, it can protect pumps, agitators, and heat exchangers from corro-sion. It’s also used in hot cathodes and as a cladding for nuclear fuel rods.

A QUESTION OF CALCULATION BGR researchers believe that up to one bil-lion tons of manganese nodules are located in the area under license in the Pacific. The value of the metal deposits depends on daily prices. “We’d need to remove around 20 percent of the surface area for the invest-ment to pay off,” says Wiedicke-Hombach.

Japan, Australia, and China are testing prototypes for mining manganese nodules, including remote controlled mining dredges, continuously operating chains of giant pails, and air and water pumps. Environmental damage remains the big drawback, and fur-

ther research, as well as new models and measuring techniques, will be needed to prevent such damage in the future.

Decisions regarding deep-sea mining are based on comparisons of extraction costs and metal prices. Steven Scott, a geologist at the University of Toronto, envisions a remote controlled deep-sea version of a coal mining system, which would have the ore from below transported through tubes up to waiting ships or floating platforms. He can also imagine us-ing drilling robots that “can collect manganese nodules and extract massive blocks of ore from the seafloor.”

Herzig also has ideas for extracting solid deep-sea crusts. His “Moving Miner” concept involves ships that would travel from one de-posit to another with their systems, bores, dredges, and storage units. “A fleet like that would cost around €300 million,” he says, “while a similar type of land setup can run up to a billion euros.” That’s because there is no need for tunnels, shafts, and access roads in the oceans. While extracting ore crusts in the deep is costly, it’s also less damaging to the environ-ment than collecting manganese nodules be-cause removing volcanic rock doesn’t leave clouds of silt behind. Nevertheless, it takes cen-turies for an economically useful amount of ore to accumulate anew. The fact that deep-sea mineral resources aren’t really renewable hasn’t stopped anyone from trying to locate

Continued from page 11>

>

Constantly risingThe HWWI Commodity Price Index is Germany’s most important indicator of world market commodity prices and includes all key imported industrial raw materials.

2003 2004 2005 2006 2007

280300320

260240

220

200180

160140120

100

HWWI Index of World Market Prices of Commodities (in US$)

Overall indexFoodIndustrial raw materialsCrude oil

2000 = 100. Monthly averages (the average for the last month shown is incomplete as long as the month has not yet ended) Status: January 8, 2008

SOU

RCE:

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Manganese crusts

Extracted from the sea by an

expedition 30 years ago:

Giant manga-nese crust

In search of new mining technology

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Crusts rich in cobalt

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Depth in meters

Like manganese nodules, crusts rich in cobalt are formed through marine precipitation, but the crusts remain firmly linked to the seabed rock. Their thickness ranges from one to ten centimeters. The largest deposits, located at depths of between 800 and 2,500 meters, contain up to one percent cobalt. By compari-son, continental cobalt deposits contain a max-imum of 0.2 percent cobalt. Other valuable substances (especially for steel production) in-clude titanium (for hardening), cerium (stabi-lizing), nickel (finishing), and zirconium (anti-corrosion). Determining deposit volume and content requires expensive drilling and digging in massive bedrock at great depths.


Permafrost

Global competition for deep-sea mining rights

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Burning ice: If the temperature rises and pressure falls, methane gas escapes from its icy cage and begins to burn

Methane hydrates can be found on seabeds at depths below 400 meters, as well as in continental permafrost regions, which also are home to small organisms. These water-methane compounds were formed over millions of years through decomposition of organic material at low temperatures or under high pressure. One cubic meter of solid hydrate expands into 164 cubic meters of gas when heated and depressurized.

Methane hydrates

6,000

5,000

4,000

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Depth in meters


new sources. China is a newcomer here. It wasn’t until 2006 that the Chinese Academy of Engineering presented new control tech-nology, modules, and glass cables for under-water robots. And the Chinese are buying up raw material sources. “China is taking a pre-ventive approach here,” says Wiedicke-Hom-bach. Japan and India are also conducting ex-tensive research, and India’s preparations for manganese nodule mining off its coast have now reached a very advanced stage.

The first BGR ship’s crew is expected to leave from Hanover by early 2009 to extract samples near Hawaii. The BGR paid €190,000 for testing rights, which is “like a processing fee for the Seabed Authority,” says Wiedicke-Hombach. “The authority does bookkeeping and external controlling, and if we end up mining the nodules, we have to pay royalties.”

The IFM-Geomar institute in Kiel has developed and built a new robot known as “Kiel 6000” that can extract seabed samples at a depth of six kilometers. The unit will be-gin searching for “burning ice” off the coast of Oregon before the year is out. Burning ice (gas hydrates) harbors an enormous amount of energy. These frozen water-gas com-pounds catch fire when removed from the sea and ignited, whereby the gas burns off and the water flows off. Burning ice is stable only under high pressure and at very low

temperatures — i.e. in permafrost conditions or on the sea floor at depths below 400 me-ters. It is estimated that there is approxi-mately 500 trillion cubic meters of burning ice around the world — more than the cur-rently known level of natural gas reserves.

HOPES AND RISKS“Exploiting the seabed to generate energy from sources such as gas hydrates repre-sents a major challenge in safeguarding to-morrow’s energy supplies,” says Margrit Wetzel, who is responsible for maritime is-sues on the German parliament’s Economy and Technology committee. The problem is that methane gas hydrates act as a kind of frozen putty that stabilizes the continental slopes between the coastal shelves and the deep seabed. Removing this stabilizing sub-stance could cause devastating landslides or tsunamis. In addition, methane is a power-ful greenhouse gas. Allowed to escape in an uncontrolled manner, it would have a very adverse effect on the earth’s climate.

Researchers believe another environ-mental problem may harbor a solution here: scientists would like to store the other major greenhouse gas, CO2, in the seabed, in order to keep it out of the atmosphere — and then extract the energy-rich methane hydrate in exchange, so to speak. “Liquid CO2 could be pumped into an area beneath the methane

> deposit, thereby pushing it out,” Herzig ex-plains. The carbon dioxide would then freeze, stabilizing the seabed. The natural gas thus pushed out could be channeled to the surface and collected. “This method is safer and sim-pler than gas extraction on land,” says Her-zig. For the last 12 years, the Sleipner drilling platform off the coast of Norway has been us-ing a similar technique, which will soon be launched in conjunction with the world’s first underwater natural gas extraction facility, at the Snøhvit Field in the Barents Sea. Here, it took only 24 years to progress from the dis-covery of the fields at the Norwegian conti-nental shelf to the first practice run at a depth of 300 meters.

And access could soon be gained to the seabed under the North Pole, where a Rus-sian flag made of rust-proof titanium was planted at a depth of 4,200 meters in August 2007. The race to conquer the Arctic and capture its treasures has thus begun. Den-mark, Canada, Norway, and the U.S. are stak-ing claims; large energy companies are re-questing licenses; and everyone is feverishly developing mining technology. At the end of May 2008, the five “Arctic superpowers” will meet at the invitation of Denmark in Ilulissat, Greenland, to discuss how matters should progress in the future. The resources in the polar region are coveted by a host of players, so tough negotiations are expected. <PH

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Guardians of the DeepBased in Kingston, Jamaica, the International Seabed Authority (ISA) monitors all deep-sea activities of governments, corporations, and scientific institutes — in addition to setting environmental standards for the biosphere. Applicants who would like to conduct research on the ocean floor must pay a license fee of $250,000 (€170,000 as of December 2007) and submit annual reports. Then they can develop technologies for commercial deep-sea mining — but any new knowledge they gain must be shared with all 155 ISA member nations (as of December 2007). A deep-sea mining code for manganese nodules has been in effect since 2000, and efforts to draw up a code for massive sulfides and ore crusts began in the summer of 2007. “There are still critical is-sues to be addressed — mainly those involving the division of zones and the fees that need to be paid,” says Satya Nandan, who has been ISA Secretary General since 1996.

SHAPINGDEEP SEAEVONIK MAGAZINE 1/2008 21


22 EVONIK MAGAZINE 1/2008INFORMING

Only

1,3

18.12. 2006

1,35

1,4

1,45

1,50

2. 4. 2007 2. 7. 2007 1.10. 2007

persons lived in the typical German household in 2006; in 1991 the figure was 2.27 persons. People age 65 and older were the only inhabit-ants of 23% of the 39.8 million households.

2.08 Exchange rates

Strong euroIn 2007 the euro soared in value compared to the dollar

Energy UseIn 2006 worldwide consumption of energy from primary sources (coal, petroleum, natural gas, nuclear power) increased to the equivalent of 10,878.5 million tons of oil — 2.4 percent more than in 2005. According to the German Energy Agency (dena), 80 percent of the energy used came from fossil fuels. The industrialized countries, with just one sixth of the planet’s population, use half of the energy consumed. Asia’s dynamically developing economies are also among the major energy consumers

GR

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23

4

2007

5

6

7

8

F M M J A S N D

8,5

4,9

4,3 4,5

5,7

7,4

8,5 8,5

7,4

6,7

4,84,4 4,5

*Prognose

*

Gross domestic product

Giant steps for GermanyEconomy

Cautious consumers Consumer confidence in Germany fluctuated in 2007

Germany’s gross domestic product in 2007 was nearly €2.5 trillion. Adjusted for price, that corresponds to an increase of 2.5 percent compared to the previous year. The increase in 2006 on the previous year’s result was 2.9 percent

Agriculture, forestry and fishing

0.9 %

Million tonnes of oil equivalent (Mtoe)

0 – 10 Mtoe

11 – 50 Mtoe

51 – 100 Mtoe

101 – 200 Mtoe

201 – 300 Mtoe

301 – 400 Mtoe

401 – 500 Mtoe

501 – 1,000 Mtoe

1,001 – 1,500 Mtoe

1,501 – 2,000 Mtoe

2,000+ Mtoe

Oil equivalent (oe)International unit for the calorific value of various energy carriers (natural gas, coal, nuclear power, hydropower) measured in a quantity of crude oil (here one million tonnes) 1 Mtoe = 41.9 petajoules or 11.6 terawatt hours

SOURCE: GFK

SOURCE: BP “STATISTICAL REVIEW OF WORLD ENERGY FULL REPORT 2007”, INTERNATIONAL ENERGY AGENCY “KEY WORLD ENERGY STATISTICS 2007”

Consumer confidence index in points

No data

Construction 4.1 %

Manufacturing25.9 %

Retail, hospitality and transport 17.8%Public and private sector service providers 21.9 %

Finance, real estate rentals

and corporate services

providers29.4 %

SOURCE: GERMAN FEDERAL STATISTICAL OFFICE

€2,423 billion


24 SEPARION EVONIK MAGAZINE 1/2008SHAPING

A High-Power Trio

TEXT KLAUS JOPP

WHENEVER HE HAS THE TIME and the weather allows it, Dr. Andreas Gutsch spends 15 minutes in the evening sitting on a chair in front of his trailer home, where he takes in the view of the lovely country-side in Saxony. Sometimes he wears a heavy coat when it’s chilly. This ritual is an impor-tant part of his life — even if it’s not always carried out in the same place. “I really need that time,” says Gutsch, the managing di-rector of Li-Tec Battery GmbH & Co. KG in Kamenz, Saxony. “I use it to collect my thoughts, reflect on the events of the day, and prepare myself for what’s ahead.”

Gutsch is a practical man, which is why he lives in a trailer that is located close to his workplace. He was sent to manage Li-Tec by Evonik Industries AG, after previously serv-ing as the director of Creavis Technologies & Innovation in Marl, which is Evonik’s cor-porate research unit. Gutsch, who had man-aged some 200 scientists at Creavis, was happy to accept the challenge of his new ap-pointment in rural Saxony, and he describes the experience as an adventure: “We’re one hundred percent convinced that there are great opportunities here, which is why I de-cided to take on the responsibility of ensur-ing that the German economy can compete in the battery sector with its strong rivals from Asia.”

But there was at least one evening in December 2007 when Gutsch was unable to enjoy his contemplative ritual outside his trailer. That happened when he had to travel to Berlin with his colleagues Dr. Gerhard Hörpel from Evonik’s Science to Business Center Nanotronics in Marl and Professor Paul Roth from the University of Duisburg-Essen. They were there as one of the four teams nominated for the German Future Prize — the most important award for technological innovation in Germany, which was presented by German president Horst Köhler (see Evonik Magazine 4/2007).

Praise from Germany’s president for Paul Roth, Andreas Gutsch, and Gerhard Hörpel (from left)

Andreas Gutsch, Gerhard Hörpel, and Paul Roth invented the new SEPARION ceramic separator — the key component for modern lithium-ion batteries sold on world markets

Contemplation in a camping chair: Andreas >

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Gutsch takes a break and relaxes with a beer in front of his trailer home in Kamenz. He’ll soon be moving to an old forester’s house



The three ended up receiving special men-tion, with the award itself being captured by a project for a new type of light-emitting diode. They were, however, far from disap-pointed by the fact that their “Mega-Perfor-mance Nano Coating” project failed to take home the award. “The nomination and the award presentation generated huge interest in our development. We couldn’t imagine a better marketing vehicle,” says Hörpel. “In fact, we have to make sure now that all the media attention and the talks with potential customers don’t distract us from our work.” And there’s still plenty of work for them to do before the first hybrid or electric vehicles powered by batteries from Evonik can hit the road.

Unlike Gutsch, Hörpel likes to do his thinking when he’s on the move. So, while Gutsch is quietly sitting outside in Kamenz,

Creative ideas for a global market worth billions

Contemplation on a bike: Dr. Gerhard Hörpel gets his best ideas while on the move. The bike trips he takes in the Münster region thus keep both his body and his mind in shape. Hörpel is a big believer in good teamwork — and he certainly hit the jackpot with the SEPARION team (photo, right):

>


27

it’s likely that avid cyclist Hörpel can be found riding his bike through the region around Münster. Sometimes he even uses a high-tech bicycle equipped with a state-of-the-art energy storage system.

A MARKET WORTH BILLIONSThe “Mega-Performance Nano Coating” project centers around a flexible separator that is covered with a porous nano-sized ceramic layer on both sides. The compo-nent’s most important task is to keep the battery’s cathode and anode separate from each other in order to prevent a short cir-cuit. The separator also needs to be perme-able for lithium ions. Extremely thin and flexible enough to be easily rolled onto a spool, this component holds the key to the outstanding performance the lithium-ion battery needs to deliver in order to provide

energy to cars and power plants, to name just two examples.

The market for such applications will be worth billions in the future: the experts be-lieve it will grow from the current volume of approximately €1.4 billion to €3.9 billion by 2015. Energy storage units are a must for both mobile and stationary applications if society is to successfully address the climate problem through the increased utilization of renewable energy sources. That’s because power from sources like the sun, wind, and tides does not flow continu-ously. Instead, it must be stored if it is to be utilized.

Lithium-ion batteries already have a market share of 99 percent in the so-called CCC segment of cell phones, mobile com-puters, and camcorders. They’re also in-creasingly being used in power tools that

need to operate for long periods of time far away from electrical sockets. The required output here is less than two ampere-hours. By comparison, an automobile needs more than ten ampere-hours. The SEPARION separator enables such high capacity be-cause its ceramic membrane makes even large batteries more reliable, powerful, and long-lasting — due not least to the mem-brane’s temperature stability.

The development work on SEPARION began more than ten years ago in a com-pletely different field. “At that time, we were producing completely ceramic mem-branes near Enschede in the Netherlands,” Hörpel recalls. “We used to filter liquid dung there and then use the water to make coffee in order to show how effective the filtering process was.” However, the ma terial displayed the typical drawbacks of ceramics, as it was rigid and brittle — and therefore far from ideal for real applications.

It was at this point that an invention from Saarland came into the picture. “We met Dr. Bernd Penth at one of the many membrane workshops we attended,” says Hörpel. At the workshop Penth presented a flexible ceramic water-filtration mem-brane made of stainless steel mesh. Profes-sor Michael Dröscher, who is now head of Innovation Management Chemicals at Degussa, acquired the system technology for Creavis.

With the help of expertise from Evonik Degussa GmbH in the area of particle tech-nology (and nano technology in particu-lar), which was further developed together with Professor Paul Roth, a strategy was then pursued to make the original water filter thinner and thinner until it could be used as a flexible foil.

It was a long and tedious process — and the fact that it was ultimately successful was due to the tremendous dedication of all those involved. Even as a child, Hörpel shocked many adults with his creative use of the chemical set in his parents’ basement. Gutsch, on the other hand, couldn’t decide whether he wanted to be a locomotive engineer, a pilot, or a farmer (his mother had grown up on a farm). When he began to have trouble with spelling in school, his mother told him: “Don’t worry — just >

Dr. Andreas Schuch, Dr. Gerhard Hörpel, Rolf Terwonne (seated), Dr. Matthias Pascaly, Dr. Hans- Jürgen Wessely, Dr. Martin Schuster, Dr. Christian Hying, Friedmann Rex (seated), Dr. Volker Hennige (from left to right)

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LiTecLiTec

LiTec

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LiTecLiTec

LiTecLiTec

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LiTec

100 - 10.000 KWh

Energy storage in the future

Purely electric V2G (vehicle-to-grid) car

TodayConventional lithium-ion batteries with 3 Wh output

TomorrowSystems from Evonik signifi cantly increase battery output

Even further in the futureLarge lithium-ion batteries serve as power grid buffers

Use in hybrid vehicles with mixed electric motor/combustion engine drive system

Small lithium-ion batter-ies already dominate the market for cell phones, laptops, and camcorders.

A large number of electric cars

run on elec-tricity taken

from the grid, and can also

re-channel this energy back

into the grid if necessary

A large number of batteries are combined to create small power plants

Renewable energy

Battery output is once again

increased by a factor of ten

Lithium-ion batteries are used today mostly to power cell phones, laptops, and camcorders. However, technology from Evonik will also make it possible to utilize the power packs in much bigger devices in the future. This will create new opportunities for their application — initially in hybrid and electric vehicles and stationary devices that store energy from the sun and the wind

Renewable, sporadically produced energy from the wind, sun, and biomass

SEPARION and LITHARIONThe SEPARION ceramic membrane and new electrode materials (LITHARION) make it possible to build batteries with signifi cantly higher output of up to 1 kWh

Hybrid cars require batteries with an output of

1 kWh eachMOBILE

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29

keep going. One day you’ll have a secretary who’ll do that for you.” Gutsch ended up graduating from high school and going to college in Karlsruhe, where he decided to study chemical engineering during a time when the environment was beginning to become a major public issue. “After that, I wanted to remove the financial burden from my parents, so I started my own business selling photovoltaic systems,” Gutsch says. “I was a little ahead of my time here, but business was still good, even back then.”

PATIENCE AND PERSISTENCEThe development of a product like SEPARION requires more than just an avid interest in the natural sciences, such as that which led Hörpel to study chemistry at Johannes Gutenberg University in Mainz. It also necessitates traits such as patience approaching stubbornness, great persis-tence, and excellent powers of persuasion, among others. Gutsch played the role of the impatient, unyielding driving force, while Hörpel served as his calm counterpart, ready to weather every storm.

This was crucial, as things didn’t always go as planned. For one thing, development of the water filters into a ceramic separator was originally supposed to take only six to eight months — not three years. During this difficult time, the team, which included Evonik employees and university staff, grew even closer together. “Even though the three of us got all the attention in the media with the Future Prize nomination, none of the successes we achieved would have been possible without the entire outstanding SEPARION team,” says Hörpel.

The SEPARION project was launched several years ago in the Screening Commit-tee, which was the precursor of Creavis. The committee consisted of a small group of creative and visionary people led by Profes-sor Michael Dröscher, head of Innovation Management Chemicals.

The team initially identified the oppor-tunities associated with membranes at a time when using lithium-ion batteries for automobiles wasn’t even a realistic consid-eration. A “membrane team” under Gerhard Hörpel tested the feasibility of the amazing ideas the group generated, and then imple-

mented them. This team consisted of Chris-tian Hying, a membrane manufacturing spe-cialist at the time and now production manager for SEPARION; the ceramics spe-cialist Volker Hennige, who now manages the lithium-ion activities of Creavis in China; and Sven Augustin, who had exten-sive experience in market applications for membranes, and is now the expert for auto-motive battery applications on Evonik’s Automotive Industry Team. These days, a 40-member team led by Hans-Jürgen Wessely continues to successfully move forward with the development of lithium technology at Evonik.

At the beginning of 2006, the battery specialists continued their success story in Saxony by purchasing Ionity AG — an acqui-sition that now enables them to build even bigger lithium-ion batteries. They then launched Li-Tec Battery GmbH as a new partnership, taking advantage of Ionity’s existing infrastructure. “This really helped us, because we were able to move into a hall with 8,000 square meters of space that al-ready housed an excellent infrastructure, including one of the largest drying rooms in Europe,” says Gutsch.

Plans call for the previous manual pro-duction of battery cells in Kamenz to be switched over to an automated line before the year is out, and the existing expertise will also be exploited to the fullest extent.

The team is pursuing a two-pronged marketing strategy here. On the one hand, they plan to enter as soon as possible the already established markets for the batter-ies, such as the segments for electrically operated bikes, scooters, boats, and jet skis, as well as industrial applications such as electric forklifts, lawnmowers, and cleaning machines. On the other, the team has already established partnerships to serve the markets of tomorrow, whereby the focus here is on automotive applica-tions. Their goals are ambitious, as they are looking to produce their 100,000th cell before the end of this year.

INTENSIVE RESEARCHThe intense interest of various industries in the batteries is illustrated by a research and development initiative launched by the German Ministry of Education and

Research (BMBF) and the companies BASF, Bosch, Evonik, Li-Tec, Evonik New Ener-gies GmbH, and all the members of the German Association of the Automotive Industry (VDA).

The initiative goes by the rather long-winded name of “Lithium-Ion Batteries for the Mobilization of Renewable Energy for the Future and for Greater Efficiency in Exploiting Fossil and Renewable Energy Sources,” and is initially scheduled to run for three years. The industrial companies will contribute €360 million to the project as a consortium, while the ministry will provide €60 million.

Evonik Industries is also working with the German Research Foundation (DFG) to support another initiative known as “Func-tional Materials and Material Analysis of Lithium High-Power Batteries,” a funda-mental research project that involves 12 universities and research institutes.

In addition to its own activities in this area, Evonik has endowed a professorship for Applied Material Science for Energy Storage and Conversion at the Westfälische Wilhelms-Universität in Münster. The goal here is to establish an internationally com-petitive research program for studying the energy storage potential of large-volume lithium-ion batteries. Chemetall and VW are also sponsoring the professorship.

In the meantime, lithium-related activ-ities continue at Evonik and Li-Tec. A pas-senger car in the VW Golf segment needs to have 160 cells from Kamenz to travel a distance of approximately 150 kilometers at a speed of 130 km/h. The power packs that contain such cells can also store the fluctuating current from solar and wind facilities (see box), thereby significantly increasing the efficiency and value of these renewable energy sources.

The three researchers get their own energy for tackling the major challenges in their project from the same source — their families, which is why Gutsch will soon be ending his trailer-living phase and moving into an old forester’s house. This will enable his sons to at least visit him on weekends. The boys like to build model airplanes and ships, which could also be run on lithium-ion batteries. These batteries have a bright future ahead of them at Evonik. <

>


30 CLIMATE-FRIENDLY LIVING EVONIK MAGAZINE 1/2008

TEXT CATRIN KRAWINKEL

THERE ARE NO LIMITS to the imag-ination when it comes to modern living: innovative ideas include heating buildings with energy from the depths of the earth, improving air quality with concrete roof-ing tiles, and converting solar energy into electricity. The Real Estate Business Area of Evonik Industries AG consistently implements a full array of technological innovations that reduce pollutant emissions and lower utility costs.

The most recent example of the compa-ny’s activities here is offered by “the world’s first industrially manufactured, ecologically active roofing tiles.” Evonik used the tiles to cover 3,000 square meters of roof space on eight multi-family buildings in Duisburg, a unique pilot project in Germany. These tiles, which do much more than just protect houses from rain and snow, were produced by the company Nelskamp using a new material developed by the HeidelbergCement Group: a micro-cement containing titanium-dioxide crystals. This non-toxic material was discov-ered in Norway and the U.S. in 1908. Al-though it is 2,500 times thinner than a human hair, the material layer used in the roofing tiles is so powerful that, in combination with sunlight, it can transform pollutants such as nitrogen oxides into harmless substances.

Climate Protection = Cost SavingsEvonik uses intelligent concepts for sustainable climate protection, creating solutions that really pay off

Nitrogen oxide is released every day by industrial plants and automobiles; when exposed to sunlight, it converts into toxic ozone. If the gas comes into contact with titanium dioxide in daylight, however, it rapidly turns into harmless nitrate molecules, which flow to the ground in rainwater and seep into the earth as neutral salts. Here they serve as plant nutrients or find their way into sewage systems, to be eventually filtered out at water treatment facilities.

Because it isn’t consumed when trans-forming nitrogen oxides, titanium dioxide can be used an unlimited number of times as a

catalyst. This means the roofing tiles, which are similar in appearance to conventional tiles and installed in exactly the same man-ner, can help to improve air quality and reduce ozone concentrations in urban areas.

SUPER TILES A similar project in Italy, which was spon-sored by the EU, demonstrated that concrete containing titanium dioxide can break down as much as 90 percent of the nitrogen oxides that make contact with it when the sun is shin-ing, and up to 70 percent when the sky is over-cast. Reiner Kathenbach, head of Technology

Pilot project: A total of 3,000 square meters of new roofi ng being installed in Duisburg

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and Residential Management at Evonik Woh-nen GmbH, is delighted with the new roof-ing tiles: “We renovate an average of 150 to 160 buildings each year. Any building with a steep roof can be fitted with the innovative tiles, and when we install them, we’re mak-ing a significant contribution to environ-mental protection.” In fact, 200 square me-ters of roof surface equipped with the tiles can eliminate the equivalent of the exhaust emis-sions generated by a 2,000-kilometer car trip.

Buildings thus modernized are given new heat-insulating windows as well. Their room and basement ceilings are also insulated, and

their facades are sealed with a heat-insulating composite, as specified by the stringent reg-ulations of Germany’s Reconstruction Loan Corporation (KfW). The primary energy consumption of the modernized buildings is nearly the same as that of a comparable new house, so heating costs are cut sharply. The renovation measures also lower annual CO2 emissions by at least 40 kilograms per square meter (see Evonik Magazine 4/2007).

SUNNY DEVELOPMENTSIt goes without saying that all buildings built by the company also comply with the latest

environmental and climate protection stan-dards. At present, for example, the company is building the Sonnensiedlung (“Sunny Community”) residential complex in the city of Moers. The complex will consist of 60 homes, whose heating requirements will be met in part by geothermal sources, with hot water to be supplied by solar energy. Other buildings will be equipped with pho-tovoltaic units, and the direct current they generate will be fed into the local AC grid via an inverter.

Once the geothermal source has been tapped, it will be channeled into households with the help of a heat pump, making energy available at all times from an extremely re-liable source. Installation of the needed equipment will cost approximately €10,000 per household, an investment that will pay off because the heat supplied by the units will reduce energy costs by more than two-thirds compared to conventional setups.

“Germany’s Renewable Energy Sources Act not only provides new homeowners with guaranteed payments for energy they feed into the grid; the complete environ-mental technology used is also eligible for KfW loans,” says Kathenbach. Another benefit for homes equipped with such technology is that they require no chimneys, oil tanks, or gas hookups — in addition to producing no emissions. <

The Sonnensiedlung in Moers is equipped with state-of-the art environmental technology

UV radiation

TiO2

Titanium dioxide

NOx

NOx

NO3-

NOx

NO3-

ClimaLife roofi ng tile surface

Rain

Titanium dioxide in micro-concrete

neutralizes pollutants in the

atmosphere NO3-

The roofi ng tiles are made of micro-concrete that contains titanium oxide crystals. When exposed to sunlight, the crystals transform nitrogen oxides into nitrate molecules. The molecules fl ow down in rainwater and seep into the earth as neutral salts, or else fi nd their way into sewage systems, where they are fi ltered out at water treatment plants.

How modern roofing tiles function

SOURCE: NELSKAMP


32 RUHRFESTSPIELE EVONIK MAGAZINE 1/2008EXPERIENCING

TEXT ULRICH SCHMIDT

TWO YEARS AGO, in a bold departure from tradition, one of Europe’s most re-nowned theaters was invited to stage the opening event of the 2006 Ruhrfestspiele in Recklinghausen in its mother tongue. Fea-turing an Oscar-winning actor in the lead role, it promised to be an evening full of glamour and quality drama. Would it work? It did: the audience was ecstatic. Kevin Spacey delivered a tour de force as Shake-speare’s Richard II in the Trevor Nunn pro-duction from London’s Old Vic Theatre, where Spacey is also the artistic director.

This year, thanks to the efforts of princi-pal festival sponsor Evonik Industries AG, Spacey is making a much-heralded return to Recklinghausen (May 1 to June 15, 2008) with a play by the name of Speed the Plow. “We’re very proud to be principal sponsor of the Ruhrfestspiele,” explains Inken Os-termann, responsible for sponsoring at Evonik. “Over the years, the festival has de-veloped into a real magnet for theater lovers from all over the world and for some of the very best performers as well.”

Spacey’s stage partner in the new pro-duction will be Jeff Goldblum. The play was written by David Mamet, a contemporary U.S. playwright who has also created success-ful screenplays for Hollywood, the setting of

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A Taste of HollywoodWith Kevin Spacey once again the star of the Ruhrfestspiele and Peter Zadek also joining in, Frank Hoffmann

> Kevin Spacey and Jeff Goldblum, appearing in Speed the Plow at this year’s Ruhrfestspiele


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Frank Hoffmann (center) together

with actor Herbert Knaup

(left) and Hasko Weber,

director of the Stuttgart

and his team have created a festival program that puts the dream back into America

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Straddling two continents

Judith Rosmair stars in Frank Hoffmann’s production of A Moon for the Misbegotten

Josef Bierbichler in Cat on a Hot Tin Roof by Tennessee Williams

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the Recklinghausen production. In Speed the Plow, secretary Karen hands her boss, the Hollywood producer Bobby Gould (Kevin Spacey), a script of undeniable artistic merit but minimal box office appeal. Meanwhile, old friend Charlie Fox (Jeff Goldblum) calls by with a screenplay as banal as they come but with a major star already signed up. Bobby faces a choice between art and commerce.

Two years ago, Kevin Spacey paid Reck-linghausen theatergoers a huge compliment when he praised the festival’s unique atmo-sphere. And this memory has prompted him to return. What’s more, Australia’s Holly-wood star Cate Blanchett also got wind of his glowing report and has opted to bring her directorial debut — David Harrower’s Blackbird, which deals with the sensitive subject of child abuse — along with the Syd-ney Theatre Company to the Ruhrgebiet.

REVERIE AND REALITY“Once upon a Time in America: A Dream of Theater” is the motto chosen by Frank Hoffmann for the 2008 season. The direc-tor of the Ruhrfestspiele is aiming to explore the contrast between reality and reverie, as dramatized, for example, in his production of Eugene O’Neill’s A Moon for the Misbe-gotten, a story involving an explosive com-bination of love and booze. Hoffmann’s lead-ing lady is Judith Rosmair, Germany’s Actress of the Year 2007.

Between these two poles — on the one hand, the American theater of the 1940s, which was still heavily influenced by Eu-rope; on the other, its contemporary absorp-tion of Hollywood themes in the Mamet pro-duction — come works from writers such as Tennessee Williams, Arthur Miller, and Sam Shepard. In this way, Hoffmann also aims to show how in a mere 100 years America has managed to forge a theater that is every bit a match for the older European tradition.

Ironic takes on America’s image can be expected from Jérôme Savary, who is putting on Happy End by Dorothy Lane, Kurt Weill, and Bertolt Brecht, and from Sombrero, a dance theater production brought to Reck-linghausen by Compagnie DCA–Philippe Decouflé. Sombrero takes the audience on a lighthearted journey through a world of light and shadow in search of an ironic Mexican-inspired angle on the festival’s motto.

> Dance has always played a major role at the Ruhrfestspiele. This year, Compagnie Senti-mental Bourreau is performing a piece based on the novel Sweet Thursday by John Stein-beck. As so often, Steinbeck examines the dark side of the American dream with its emphasis on achievement and prosperity. Counterpointing this colorful mix of dance, music, and drama, which is produced in asso-ciation with the Festival d’Avignon, is a show presented by Pockemon Crew Compagnie, currently one the most innovative groups in international breakdance, which has risen literally from the basement of the Lyon Op-era to become a set feature of that renowned stage. Similarly international is the now well-established Fringe Festival, which this year features 16 productions from seven differ-ent countries in a variety of venues, both indoor and outdoor, right across downtown Recklinghausen.

Meanwhile, in a major treat for theater buffs, the controversial director Peter Zadek is making a surprise return with a production of Luigi Pirandello’s Vestire gli ignudi (To Clothe the Naked). In the wake of the prob-lems attending his production of Twelfth Night in Vienna, not much had been heard from Zadek, who has been a frequent guest director in Recklinghausen in the past. His lat-est production keeps faith with the festival’s motto and examines the dream harbored by the nursemaid Ersilia to have her own failed and “naked” existence clothed in art by the writer Nota. As ever, nothing is quite as it seems. Festival-goers can look forward to see-ing how Zadek, a director who is not known for pulling his punches, deals with this play of shifting identities. <Further information is available at:www.ruhrfestspiele.de

Coming to the Ruhrfestspiele: Harald Schmidt in Elvis lebt. Und Schmidt kann es beweisen

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36 EVONIK MAGAZINE 1/2008INFORMING

From April 21–25, 2008, Evonik Industries AG will be staging an impressive presentation at the world’s biggest industrial trade show — the Hannover Messe. The fair is also the world’s most important platform for technical innovations, and the creative industrial group based in Essen will be presenting innovations from its Chemicals, Energy, and Real Estate business areas to visitors from all over the world, at a stand measuring approximately 800 square meters. Highlights are to include new state-of-the-art systems for resource conservation and energy effi-ciency — ranging from environmentally focused building modernization tech-niques to high-tech systems for geothermal energy generation and coal power plants — and advanced applications for chemicals in the automotive industry, in-cluding new lithium-ion batteries for hybrid vehicles.

Hannover Messe

Innovations from Evonik

The Public Affairs department at Evonik Industries AG has a new director. Following the retirement of Dr. Wilfried Czernie, 67, Wilhelm Schmidt took over the department at the beginning of 2008. Schmidt, 63, also now serves as the authorized rep-resentative of the Executive Board and managing di-rector of the Group’s offices in Berlin and Brussels. Markus Schulz is now director of the Evonik Indus-tries office in Berlin, while Karlheinz Maldaner holds the same position in Brussels. Wilhelm Schmidt brings to his new position extensive political experi-ence, having served for many years as a member of Parliament (Bundestag) for the German Social Dem-ocratic Party (SPD) and as the party’s chief whip.

Over the last few weeks, Evonik Industries has been present in both Berlin and Brussels to introduce the new Group and explain its goals. Political officials and members of parliament in both cities have ex-pressed great interest in the new company. In Berlin,

Berlin and Brussels

Wilhelm Schmidt Is New Director of the Public Affairs Department

Evonik Executive Board Chairman Dr. Werner Müller spoke to members of parliament (including Bundes-tag President Dr. Norbert Lammert), federal minis-ters, and business officials. Dr. Müller thanked those who supported the restructuring of RAG to create Evonik and the establishment of the RAG-Stiftung. In Brussels, Evonik Executive Board member Dr. Klaus Engel presented a review of the company’s first 150 days to members of the European Parliament and the European Commission, as well as representatives of various business associations.

During his speech, and in subsequent discus-sions, Engel also spoke about the company’s critical view of the EU’s REACH directive for chemical sub-stances and the European emission certificate trading system. Jo Leinen, a member of the European Parlia-ment and chairman of its Committee on Constitu-tional Affairs, was also on hand as a guest speaker at the event.

European Parliament member Jo Leinen talks with Executive Board member Klaus Engel

Wilhelm Schmidt is the new director of the Public Affairs department

Karlheinz Maldaner now heads the Group offi ce in Brussels

Markus Schulz is now head of the Group offi ce in Berlin

Bundestag President Dr. Norbert Lammert speaking with Dr. Werner Müller

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No other country in the world, with exception of the U.S., gets as much emotionalized media exposure in Germany as does Russia. That’s not surprising, given that Russia is a permanent member of the UN Secu-rity Council, a nuclear power, and a major supplier of gas and oil — not to mention one of Germany’s neigh-bors in Europe. At the same time, everything that happens in Russia is usually attributed to President Vladimir Putin, so the outgoing president has become the main target of criticism of Russia.

A study conducted by dimap-communications on behalf of the WAZ Media Group examined the fol-lowing six “communication events” involving Russia over the last 12 months: the murders of journalist Anna Politkovskaya and former KGB agent Alexander Litvinenko, the 2007 Munich Conference on Secu-rity Policy and Putin’s controversial speech at that event, the EU-Russia Summit in Finland, the award-ing of the 2014 Winter Olympic Games to Sochi, and Russia’s parliamentary elections and upcoming presidential election.

Nearly all articles published about these subjects mentioned “Putin” by name. Particularly revealing was a trend noticed in reports on Politkovskaya’s murder, whereby the crime was used to attack the Russian political system in general, with issues such as “crime fighting” and “freedom of speech and press” mentioned much less often. The murder of Politkovskaya (who actually took money for the in-formation she gave to foreign journalists) was thus used as an excuse to settle accounts with the Russian political system in general and with Putin in particu-lar. Putin has become a symbol for everything that is wrong in Russia. Indeed, Politkovskaya’s death launched a phase of very critical reporting on Russia in line with the formula: Russia = Putin = bad (or getting worse).

It is interesting to note that correspondents in Russia and editors in Germany have differing opin-ions of Russia. Although all seem to agree that gen-eral political developments in Russia reflect that country’s authoritarian structures, editors in Ger-many tend to view Putin as a stabilizing factor, while correspondents think he’s destabilizing the country.

Of course, many of these negative opinions are expressions of anti-Russian or even anti-Soviet bi-ases. But secrecy is a part of Russian political culture, which traditionally seeks to project a picture of

strength and unity to the outside world, while con-cealing all weaknesses. Whenever bad news comes out of Russia, it’s invariably attributed to the sup-posed underdeveloped and chaotic nature of the country, accompanied by references to the inability of non-Russians to understand any of it.

It’s also interesting to note that a remarkable two thirds of the approximately 200 German correspon-dents accredited in Moscow base their assessments of the Russian political system on non-Russian sources, including German and other foreign politi-cians and representatives of international organiza-tions. Moreover, less than one percent of such as-sessments are based on statements made by German business representatives — a fact that they find very discouraging.

We in the media should therefore focus on more than just raw materials when reporting on the Rus-sian economy, as such a narrow view tends to rein-force stereotypes of Russia. That’s because a head-line containing the word “gas” invariably also contains the names “Putin,” “Medvedev,” or “Schröder.” There is much more to say — both good and bad — about the Russian economy, however.

It’s not surprising that German business representa-tives in Russia (there are 4,500 German companies active in the country, including 4,300 small and me-dium-sized firms) criticize the fact that Russia’s me-dia image doesn’t correspond to reality there. Many things have changed for the better, for example, and the standard of living has also improved. More than anything else, Russians don’t want to be told what to do. It’s important to keep in mind Russia’s authoritar-ian history and the fact that things were much worse and chaotic under Yeltsin than in the recent era of rel-ative stability under Putin. The German media, how-ever, prefers to focus on sensational negative topics like the Russian mafia, prostitution, corruption, na-tionalism, and Chechnya. It also tends to overesti-mate the support enjoyed by groups opposed to Pu-tin, such as the one led by Garri Kasparov.

The following is a good example of how the Ger-man media covers Russia and Putin: the Russian president and the Patriach of Russia, Alexy II, re-cently presided over a ceremony honoring victims of Stalinist terror, in which Putin gave a clearly anti-Stalinist speech. This speech was ignored by the me-dia, which instead often implies that Putin is seeking a re-Stalinization of Russian society. Yet the only pos-sible basis they have for this charge is that Putin has, in the past, praised Stalin’s leadership during the Sec-ond World War.

Despite all this, it’s also true that Russian officials fail to address the needs of foreign media representa-tives. It often takes days or even weeks to obtain a statement from a Russian ministry on a particular is-sue. So Russian government officials shouldn’t be surprised when their views don’t make it into news reports abroad. Basically, Russian politicians are bad public relations managers.

In the meantime, German business representa-tives have the good stories most journalists seem so uninterested in. This disinterest is perhaps due to the fact that reporters like to avoid the appearance of be-ing PR mouthpieces for major corporations. Still, such business officials would certainly find an atten-tive audience if they were prepared to speak openly about both their successes and difficulties in Russia.

GUEST COLUMN

Russia’s Negative Image in the German Media

The author is editor-in-chief of the WAZ Media Group (Essen) and

special foreign affairs correspon-dent. This article is based on a

speech Kiessler gave in Moscow to the German-Russian Chamber of

Foreign Trade

TEXT RICHARD KIESSLER

Patriarch Alexy II and Vladimir Putin: An anti-Stalin speech

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38 AMERICA EVONIK MAGAZINE 1/2008EXPERIENCING

“Where Blessed Hands Do Highways, monuments, and major cities: a 2,000-kilometer journey from the North to the South of


39

Divine Work”

Derrick Freeman, a barber in Hopewell

the U.S. and to three major production plants of Evonik Industries


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North America

TEXT TOM SCHIMMECKPHOTOGR APHY JOHANNES KRÖMER

IT’S 9:30 A.M. ON A MONDAY IN NEW YORK, and the morning rush-hour traffic is head-ing toward gridlock. The bridges are jammed and the traffic in the tunnels is barely mov-ing. In an effort to get away from the high-rise canyons of Manhattan, I inch my way through the Holland Tunnel under the Hud-son River on my way to New Jersey. This state has the reputation of being a huge sub-urb, the “bedroom” of the “BosWash mega-lopolis” made up of Boston, New York City, Philadelphia, Baltimore, and Washington, D.C. But in fact, New Jersey has a lot more to offer. It has the second-largest proportion of both Jews and Muslims in the United States. It also has many Asians, Italians, and Native Americans, who have been living here quite a bit longer than all of these immigrant groups — for more than 2,800 years. The first Europeans — from Sweden and the Netherlands — didn’t come to New Jersey until the early 17th century. Later on, it was one of the focal points of the Revolutionary War, with tiny Morristown serving twice as General Washington’s headquarters.

NEW JERSEY TURNPIKE, 2 P.M. The service areas along the turnpike are named after his-torical figures, such as the inventor Thomas

Edison, Presidents Grover Cleveland and Woodrow Wilson, the poet Walt Whitman, and even the football coach Vince Lombardi. I stop at the Molly Pitcher Service Area in Middlesex County, which is named after Molly Pitcher, who carried well water pitcher by pitcher to slake the thirst of the soldiers and cool the overheated cannons at the Bat-tle of Monmouth in 1778. After her husband was wounded, she took over his position as an artillery gunner.

PHILADELPHIA, TUESDAY, 8 A.M. “I was bruised and battered,” sings Bruce Springs-teen, one of many musicians from New Jersey, in his hit song “Streets of Philadel-phia.” “Oh brother, are you gonna leave me / Wastin’ away / On the streets of Philadel-phia?” Today, the streets of “Philly,” as it’s known to its inhabitants, don’t seem at all desolate; they’re busy and friendly. After all, the city’s name, derived from Greek, means “City of Brotherly Love.”

INTERSTATE 95, 11:30 A.M. Between the tiny state of Delaware and the city of Balti-more in northeastern Maryland, Interstate 95 becomes the John F. Kennedy Memorial Highway for 50 miles. Kennedy inaugurated this stretch of the highway eight days before he was assassinated in November 1963. More than 30 million vehicles a year race

A fascinating journey into

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This timbered house in

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along this highway, which is eight lanes wide at some points and is due to become even wider. The tangle of highways around Wash-ington, D.C., is not far away. I’m already on the Capital Beltway that circles the city and the radio is warning drivers of massive con-gestion up ahead, so I decide to make a short detour into the center of town.

WASHINGTON, D.C., 1:30 P.M. The sun is shining. One thing TV viewers seldom see is the huge contrasts that characterize this city as well. Just a few blocks from the center of global power, life can be very rough — or very pleasant. The vibrant Adams Morgan neigh-borhood, which lies north of the city center between Georgia Avenue and Rock Creek Park, looks much less planned than the rest of this drawing-board city. The streets are narrow, almost European, with colorful fa-çades and interesting shops, cafés, and bars. I quickly leave Washington behind to look for the less well-known parts of America.

INTERSTATE 95, 6 P.M. The South begins just behind the Capital Beltway, in Virginia, where people still chew tobacco. Richmond, the state capital, is known to many readers of de-tective fiction as the home of Chief Medical Examiner Dr. Kay Scarpetta, a blonde Italian-American forensic physician who is also an excellent cook. Just before I reach the James >

River, I turn right onto the Downtown Ex-pressway so I can take a short look at the set-ting of these novels. As I drive through, the real Richmond looks a lot more harmless than in the books. It’s full of trees and gardens, as befits a state capital. I drive on.

HOPEWELL, WEDNESDAY, 11:30 A.M. To-day’s Virginian Pilot includes a moving re-port about the closure of the Ford factory in Norfolk, which is located to the southeast along the Atlantic coast. A total of 7,983,458 vehicles were produced here, with heavy-duty F-150 pickups rolling off the assembly line. This was a popular model, but it was too massive for modern taste and rising gas prices. According to the reporter, one for-mer employee yelled, “This is a proud day for Toyota!” Hopewell is a small town of brick houses. A quaint barbershop on the narrow street called East Broadway catches my interest. The owner, Derrick Freeman, 45, is a heavyset African-American with a beard, a bald head, and a necklace in the form of a heavy gold chain with a key. This is the key to “the heavenly kingdom,” he ex-plains. In the U.S. such an attitude is not un-usual; in fact, on his business cards the “mas-ter barber” promises “heavenly haircuts.” The line beneath it reads: “Where blessed hands do divine work.” Americans are not known for their false modesty.

The barber, who comes from New York City, explains: “A woman lured me here, and then she left me.” One of his daughters still lives in New York, but his other four children are scattered far and wide, he reports while giving a difficult shave to a customer who is sitting extremely still. Hopewell is “okay,” reports Freeman as he folds up his straight razor. “Business is a bit slow, but it’s all right.” He looks like a man who would do well wherever he lived.

A few blocks to the northeast is City Point, where the James River and the Appomattox River meet. This is the historic site where General Ulysses S. Grant set up his headquar-ters in the summer of 1864, eight miles behind the front lines of his army, which was besieging nearby Petersburg. Overnight, this sleepy village became a key supply point in the war. A long pier, railroad lines, and gigan-tic warehouses were built. Hundreds of ships docked in this small harbor every day. The town is full of historical monuments and Civil War museums. In one museum shop I find a counter full of sugar candy for children that is shaped like gunpowder and cannonballs

Of deodorants, ink, and cleansersAll Evonik products are regularly monitored in the testing laboratories in Hopewell. Dressed in a white lab coat and wearing

City Point belongs to a former plantation. Hopewell’s Broadway is rather uninspiring — but later on you can buy cucumbers at the side of the road

EXPERIENCINGAMERICAEVONIK MAGAZINE 1/2008



protective goggles and latex gloves, Angela Paez energetically brushes the long hair of a wig fastened to the head of a plastic doll. Paez is conducting a scientific test on a new conditioner in a lab in Hopewell, Virginia, that contains rows of white cabinets and many worktables filled with tubes, bottles, f lasks, and various types of equipment. Several other plastic heads wearing wigs are sitting on top of a refrigerator and awaiting their turn with the conditioner, while a variety of emulsions for metal processing are being tested at another table. A lab tech-nician is boring holes in large blocks of iron to test the quality of a lubricant. A nearby shelf is filled with several bottles of standard fabric softeners, and a row of control strips is hanging on the wall.

Hopewell, in eastern Virginia, has been home to production facilities of Evonik Industries AG and its predecessor companies since 1980. Today, the Group employs 230 employees in four lines of business. “Every-one here is involved in a variety of products used by millions of people all over the world, ranging from deodorants to ink to cleansing agents,” says site manager Philip Munson. Indeed, it’s amazing to see all the different applications of chemicals. Cocamidopropyl betaine, for instance, is an amphoric surfac-tant that is used as a secondary surfactant in a wide range of applications, including

shampoos and shower gels. In addition, polyurethane foams can be found in cars, construction sites, and even your own bed.

North America is a very important mar-ket for Evonik, which operates 33 manufac-turing facilities, distribution centers, labs, and warehouses in North America with a workforce of about 3,500, or around 13 per-cent of the Chemicals Business Area’s total workforce.

The North American region in 2006 generated €2.9 billion in revenues, which corresponds to 20% of sales for Evonik’s Chemicals Business Area. In North America, the business area manufactures basic mate-rials for paints, fertilizers, hand creams, dia-pers, glue, contact lenses, cars, mattresses, furniture, and thousands of other items. The organization’s base is in Parsippany, New Jersey — not far from New York City.

NEAR PETERSBURG, 2 P.M. The South can be rough, but it’s got a charming smile. The light and the wide horizon tighten their hold on you and pull you forward, always want-ing to drive just a few miles more. I check my route once again at the interchange near Petersburg. In spite of all kinds of exceptions, the US highway system is quite simple: the odd-numbered roads run north-south, and the even-numbered ones run east-west. The numbers increase as they go toward the

>

>

“Everyone here is involved

with surfaces in one form

or another”

Angela Paez tests a new conditioner


43



north or the east. Numbers divisible by five indicate the major highways.

I have to leave Interstate 95, the East Coast highway that connects Miami and Canada. Google Maps recommends that I bear right and continue driving in a south-westerly direction on the I-85 for the next 1,076 kilometers. The countryside becomes more and more open, and the sky seems to be higher. As soon as you leave the main road, you drive through sprawling towns with broad lawns and front yards that are not fenced in. There are lots of churches, which is why the Southeast, the region between Virginia and Texas, is known as the “Bible Belt.” On the banks of a small lake, a grandfather stands fishing with his grandchildren.

GREENSBORO, THURSDAY, 10 A.M. I arrive in Greensboro, North Carolina, in the early evening. The booth of the parking garage is manned by an odd-looking character with rings on every finger, plus bracelets. He takes his pipe out of his mouth, introduces himself as Avory Simmons, 60 years old, and gives me a quick overview of his city. Greensboro is “quite a mix,” he says, as it’s both an industrial center and a college town. “That makes things more colorful,” he adds with a grin. He used to live in the state capi-tal, but he’s happy to be back here, where it’s

“much more peaceful.” Later on, I read a lo-cal newspaper with the lovely name of The Rhinoceros Times.

Greensboro is a down-to-earth kind of place, home to about 250,000 people who work in the mechanical engineering, elec-tronics, and chemicals sectors, at a cigarette factory, and in the remains of the area’s tex-tile industry. The local restaurants have names like Ruth’s Chris Steak House, Stamey’s Barbecue, and Laddie & Duke’s Family Grille. For five years now, there’s been a huge statue on the campus of the State University of four upstanding young men, the “Greensboro Four.” On February 1, 1960, four black college boys — David Richmond, Franklin McCain, Ezell Blair, and Joseph McNeil — entered a Woolworth’s in the center of town and sat down at the lunch counter. It was a small revolution, because at that time black people were only allowed to eat standing up at a separate counter. The four young men’s sit-in launched a decade of protest against racial segregation in the United States.

The road leading out of town boasts an endless row of car dealerships. I’ve become curious because of the newspaper article about the closure of the Ford plant in Virginia, so I pull up to Green Ford. I’m approached by one of the dealership’s 20 salesmen, a solidly built young man named Zach Wyatt. He tells

>The city of Greensboro is

“quite a mix”

The American way of life: VW buggy fans get together in Herbies’ Place, the Greensboro Grasshoppers baseball team, and a monument to the “Greensboro


45

me that each salesman is expected to sell at least eight cars a month. How, I ask him. “Well, by talking to you,” Zach grins. “And by finding the right car for you.” And how is business, I ask. “Not so bad,” he rumbles eva-sively, but he soon admits that Ford is going through a “really tough” period. Nissan, Honda, and Toyota are doing booming busi-ness in the United States, but Ford, Chrysler, and GM are in a slump. Greensboro, the sales-man tells us, still has a lot of “rednecks” who love heavy-duty vehicles, as well as an in-creasing number of Hispanics. On Summit Avenue there’s a new dealership called Familia Auto Sales, where business is done in Spanish.

The situation is volatile. Zach, a chunky 21-year-old, used to be a bouncer employed by a security company. Is there a future for him in Greensboro? “I was born here,” he says almost apologetically. “My family lives here” — that is, his wife and two children. The town has a new baseball field, and the nightlife is pretty good too, says Zach, add-ing for good measure a short tribute to “Southern hospitality.”

In the land of the super-diapersGreensboro is a small city in North Carolina, where approximately 300 Evonik employees operate four of the site’s six plants, six stor- >

age facilities, and four labs. The remaining two plants are run by a company previously owned by Evonik.

Everything is highly modern here, which is why a 12-person shift team is capable of keeping two large production units running. Two of these workers sit in each unit’s con-trol room, where they literally have every-thing under observation and control. Color-ful numbers and symbols flash across 13 monitors, and there’s also a console that houses telephones, radio sets, clocks, calcu-lators, computer keyboards, and “mice,” which the technicians use to operate all of the machinery with just a few clicks.

Many types of hand hygiene and skin health products are made in Greensboro, specifically targeted for the away-from-home markets. Under the brand of STOKO Skin Care, this business line offers solutions for occupationally stressed skin, from industrial applications through to hand hygiene products for healthcare facilities and light institutional applications such as offices and schools. STOKO was the first to offer a comprehensive three-point, color-coded program into the workplace. Prod-ucts for before work are coded blue and are specifically formulated to protect the skin against continual exposure to various irritants commonly found in the workplace. Green is for cleansing products that are

formulated for high skin compatibility and performance; and red is for after-work creams that condition the skin while pro-moting regeneration. “The marketplace is highly competitive, offering products of diverse quality,” says Lori Huffman, Market-ing Manager for STOKO Skin Care. “The STOKO brand has a loyal following and a superb reputation for delivering high qual-ity products at competitive prices.”

The other products created on site are used to treat textiles, leather, water, paper, and cement. The plant’s shining stars are superabsorbers — complex networked poly-mers made of acrylic acid that can store up to 300 times their weight in f luids. The manufacturing facilities for these products extend over six floors connected by a huge freight elevator. The filling section is popu-lated by numerous forklifts that transport huge sacks containing a superabsorbent end product known as FAVOR® to a number of site warehouses.

This product is used in an increasing range of applications in firefighting, waste disposal, cable protection, and agriculture. The prod-uct demonstrations that we see resemble magic shows in which a liter of milk is poured into a rolled-up newspaper, for example — and nothing leaks out. The lion’s share of rev-enue continues to be generated by a product that never goes out of style: diapers — for

Four.” John Cranford, 82, remembers the struggle against racial segregation



which Evonik is the world market leader, with special labs in Krefeld, Germany, as well as Shanghai, Istanbul, and Greensboro.

The lab technician shows us how the super absorber polymers are made by mixing some materials together — and after just a few seconds she has a flask containing a starchy gel that can be dried out and processed into powder. Just a couple of spoonfuls of the stuff will absorb two liters of liquid. The lab in Greensboro tests diapers every day — about 15,000 a year, in fact. The researchers don’t just test their own products; they also review different brands of diapers each month and literally dissect them.

Today’s diapers are high-tech products that are sold to a huge global market. Modern manufacturing equipment can produce 600 to 1,000 diapers per minute, and companies around the world continually seek to make di-apers thinner, more absorbent, and better-fit-ting. In the 1980s the average diaper weighed more than 100 grams; today it weighs only 45 grams. Diapers also have their own monthly report, and market updates are published three to four times a year. Every diaper detail is examined under a microscope in Greens-boro, where diapers are also measured, weighed, and evaluated as to cuff elasticity, fleece properties, stretchability, fastening effectiveness, and odor emissions. Diaper surfaces are divided into grids to assess fluid

distribution. Most importantly, however, diapers are tested for absorption capacity, rate of absorbency, and storage capability — all with the help of a spin dryer. Finally, the diapers are examined to determine the speed and effectiveness of biodegradability.

The key component of this advanced test-ing facility is the “Mannequin Leakage “ sim-ulator, which contains a long row of diapered doll torsos. The torsos release liquid from built-in hoses, a process that can be altered for testing either male or female diapers. “Constant innovation is crucial if we want to maintain our technological leadership,” says lab manager Dr. Olaf Hoeller. “Innovations are kept under wraps, because what we test here are top-secret diapers.”

INTERSTATE 85, 2 P.M. The leisurely tempo is relaxing — except when I’m being passed by one of the gigantic chrome-covered trucks that turn up in my rearview mirror like grin-ning monsters. After a few days spent driv-ing on the interstates, the German debates over speed limits on the Autobahn seem very far away. The U.S. has speed limits of 55, 60, or at most 70 miles per hour (112 km/h), and speeders are sure to be spotted very quickly by the local sheriff or even by radar-equipped aircraft. Many areas of life are strictly regu-lated in the “land of opportunity.” On TV, offensive words are drowned out by bleeps.

>

Greensboro’s special diaper test

>

Putting high-tech diapers

to the test


47

Dr. Yaru Shi at work in a Greensboro laboratory



A tale of two worlds: anglers relax while a cargo ship sails by on the Mobile River; laid-back Southern fl air contrasts with the dynamic heartbeat of an Evonik

In many states the drinking age is 21, and alcohol can still be carried around on the street only in brown paper bags — just like in the days of Philip Marlowe.

As I drive on toward Charlotte, North Carolina, town names such as Westminster, Walhalla, and Athens reveal the far-flung origins of the original settlers.

I cross a corner of South Carolina and soon reach Georgia, so named in honor of King George II. After the Spanish and French had explored this area, 113 English settlers arrived on February 12, 1733, on the HMS Anne and founded the port city of Savannah. This date is still commemorated today as Georgia Day. (Although many of its inhabit-ants remained loyal to the British crown, Georgia was one of the 13 colonies that re-belled against British rule.) In 1861 Georgia joined the Confederacy, and in the winter of 1864–65 the Union general William Tecumseh Sherman burned down railway facilities, businesses, and a large proportion of homes as he cut a swath of destruction across the state. It’s all there to see in Gone with the Wind.The climate in the “Peach State” is subtrop-ical. Ice storms from the north seldom cross the Appalachians to disturb this region. But drought was a problem during the past two summers, and there’s an ever-present threat of tornadoes.

ATLANTA, 4:40 P.M. Georgia’s capital city, situated on a ridge southeast of the Chatta-hoochee River, is much more leafy and charming than I had expected. It’s easy-going and has lots of Southern charm. The five million inhabitants of greater Atlanta, the home of CNN and Coca-Cola, are dis-tributed over quite a large area.

ATLANTA, 7:30 P.M. I stop in a supermarket parking lot to ask two security guards how to get to a certain hotel on the outskirts of town. They go to great lengths to help me and describe the route to the hotel very clearly. Two hours later I encounter them again. They kindly ask me if I got to the hotel all right, and I end up spending a pleasant and relaxed evening with them, joking and telling stories. Hundreds of people fill the bars and restaurants surrounding the land-mark Midtown Art Cinema — mostly sitting outdoors, where they eat, drink, and chat vivaciously in their broad and melodious Southern accents.

INTERSTATE 85, NEAR MONTGOMERY, FRI-DAY, 9:50 A.M. After more than 1,000 ki-lometers, my freeway joins Interstate 65, which comes down from Chicago and will take me today all the way down to the Gulf of Mexico. In the Interstate Cafe, a hand-painted barracks-like building, three fat

>In the heat of the South


49

itself (pronounced “mobeel” rather than “mobile”) is located at the tip of a huge bay at the mouth of the Mobile River. Mobile’s French origins are immediately evident. In 1702 it became the first capital of the French colony of Louisiana.

During World War II, a gigantic warship production industry grew up around the bay, attracting many new inhabitants. Between 1940 and 1943 the city’s population grew by almost 90,000. After the war, Mobile re-mained an industrial center and became an increasingly popular site for company head-quarters, with attractive leisure opportuni-ties for managers and their families. Today it’s the home of EADS, Ciba, Kimberly-Clark, and Evonik. ThyssenKrupp is now investing $3.7 billion in a new steelworks here.

The sunlight along the coast is bright, and a blue sky full of puffy white clouds arches over the ships in the water. In the warship park in Mobile, visitors can admire a genuine World War II veteran, the battleship USS Al-abama. The local newspaper carries reports on class reunions, births, farewell parties, mosquito-spraying aircraft, and the 75th an-niversary of the largest fishing competition ever, the Alabama Deep Sea Fishing Rodeo, which was attended by more than 3,000 fishermen and some 100,000 spectators on Dauphin Island.

I have a late lunch at Wintzell’s Oyster House, a local institution for the past 68 years, according to the menu. There’s a blurred photo of the restaurant’s founder, a fat man sleeping slumped over a table in his restaurant. The waiter quickly brings me a dozen oysters, which I drizzle with lemon juice and eat using a small green plastic fork. They’re absolutely delicious.

Evonik’s biggest chemicals plant outside EuropeEvonik Industries AG’s most important in-dustrial plant is in Theodore, Alabama, near Mobile on the Gulf Coast. Thirty-three years ago, the first bulldozers arrived here to begin building a new chemical plant. Today, some 700 Evonik employees and around 150 con-tract employees keep the Group’s biggest non-European chemical facility humming. The plant houses a dozen production units

and storage facilities that extend over an area of two and a half square kilometers. Every-where you look, there are manufacturing facilities, tanks, and towers, all of which are surrounded by pipes and linked to roads and rail lines. As we tour the facility, our guide tells us that all of it is “basically a giant chemical kit.” The site has its own dock, water treatment facilities, and a shuttle bus. Employees who need to move around a lot travel on bicycles and small golf carts. Land has even been set aside for future expansion; it’s currently being used by a peanut and cot-ton farmer.

“It’s an excellent location,” says plant man-ager Tom Bates, pointing out that Mobile has good rail, ship, and air connections and is also easily reachable by car and truck. The region around the city is home to many engineers and experts in information technology, finance, and security systems. In other words, it’s got everything that’s needed to operate complex industrial facilities around the clock — or “24/7,” as the Americans say. The prod-ucts manufactured in Mobile include hydro-gen peroxide, a bleach used in the paper and pulp industry; amino acids for animal feed; semi-finished goods for plastic synthesis; and coatings for everything from houses and gar-den tools to airplanes. AEROSIL, an extremely fine silicic acid invented in 1942 by Degussa chemist Harry Kloepfer, is also made here and can be found in more than 250 products ranging from tires to toothpaste. AEROSIL also makes paints more scratch-resistant and silicone more stable, provides the UV protec-tion in sun creams, and helps to polish the wafers for computer chips.

In 2005, Hurricane Katrina laid waste to the region around Mobile over a swath of land more than 600 kilometers long. But despite the ever-present danger of tropical storms, the people who live in Mobile and the industries there have no intention of leaving. That’s because they love it: Mobile is a charming city with a lively sports culture — and employee turnover in its industries is extremely low.

Community counts for a lot here, and the chemical plant tries to be a good citizen as well, says Bates. Among other things, the company encourages volunteer work and supports educational and social initiatives and the arts. <

Industries plant

African-American ladies are amused by the sight of me, a clueless tourist perusing a large map. The café offers its guests all the watery coffee they can drink.

Welcome to Alabama, one of the hottest states in the U.S. and a paradise for farmers, as the growing season can last 300 days here. The downside, however, includes powerful thunderstorms, tropical storms, and hurri-canes. And for much of Alabama’s history, life was difficult for dark-skinned people, who labored on gigantic cotton plantations until the abolition of slavery in 1865.

This farming state, which used to be poor, is now booming, with an unemploy-ment rate of only 3 percent. Steelworks, aircraft production, and other heavy indus-tries are practically jostling for space. Ap-proximately 70,000 new jobs have been created in automobile production plants. By the beginning of 2009, Alabama is ex-pected to replace Detroit as the United States’ top automobile manufacturing lo-cation. But even though Alabama is boom-ing, not everything is on the up and up here. Ex-governor Don Siegelman, who used to fly to Europe and the Far East to attract in-dustry to his state, is now serving a prison sentence for bribery and other crimes.

MOBILE, 1 P.M. The last 280 kilometers to the coast have rolled by quickly. The city


50 RUHR.2010 EVONIK MAGAZINE 1/2008INSPIRING

Rallying for the Ruhr RegionTurkish-German TV personality Asli Sevindim promotes culture in the Ruhr District and the integration of immigrants in Germany

At “Baramane” in Essen, RUHR.2010 cultural director Asli Sevindim takes a break from TV news anchoring duties and efforts on behalf of the Ruhr region


51

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TEXT CATRIN KRAWINKELPHOTOGRAPHY NORBERT ENKER

“I WAS BORN IN DUISBURG — and I imagine I’ll probably die in Duisburg,” says radio and television journalist Asli Sevindim. “I’m simply a Ruhr girl, through and through!”

Sevindim, 34, walks quickly through Robert Schmidt Hall at the headquarters of the RVR regional organization in Essen and takes a seat next to Fritz Pleitgen, former director of the WDR broadcasting com-pany and currently managing director of RUHR. 2010 GmbH. “Welcome, ladies and gentlemen, to RUHR.2010’s first literary conference,” Sevindim says to the roughly

SERIES THE CULTURAL DIRECTORS OF RUHR.2010 u ASLI SEVINDIM

Discussion in Duisburg: Fritz Pleitgen with cultural directors Asli Sevindim and Dieter Gorny

50 guests in attendance. She then proceeds to confidently moderate two hours of lively discussion. Later, she reveals that she isn’t feeling well because she was up working practically all night after a terrorist plot was uncovered. Sevindim doesn’t look tired though, just a little pale, maybe — “but most people would say my skin complexion is too light for someone of Turkish ethnicity.”

Asli Sevindim is always on the move, and today is no exception. After the literary conference, she takes a short break at a Middle Eastern snack bar before heading off to a studio in Düsseldorf, where she has been hosting a daily 40-minute TV news show with her colleague Martin von Mauschwitz for the past year-and-a-half.


52 RUHR.2010 EVONIK MAGAZINE 1/2008INSPIRING

Sevindim does the newscast every weekday starting at 6:50 p.m. and alternates on the weekends. She also works for WDR radio, and was one of the founders of the Alte Feuerwache, a cultural center in Duisburg.

Culture and the integration of immi-grants in German society have been im-portant to Asli Sevindim ever since she was a schoolgirl. She has always devoted her free time to addressing and publicizing these issues, and eventually she and some of the people she worked with contacted officials from RUHR.2010. “That’s how I got to know them, and after we talked they invited me to go with a special group to Brussels to present the RUHR.2010 project’s case for making the Ruhr region the European Capital of Culture.”

The trip was a big success, and on April 11, 2006, the same day the Ruhr District was named European Capital of Culture for 2010, it was also announced that Asli Sevindim had been selected to serve as one of the four cultural directors of RUHR.2010, and the only woman director. This, of course, has made her schedule even busier. “The only thing I wish for at the moment is to not have a heart attack,” she says with a smile. With her work load — and the speed with which she gets things done — you might think she isn’t really joking. And because she’s always in a hurry, racing around the Ruhr

region all the time, Sevindim recently lost her driver’s license for the second time. But she takes it all in stride.

A CONFESSED SCATTERBRAIN“I’m totally chaotic — and I can’t help it, I just love driving fast on the autobahn,” con-fesses Sevindim. She certainly didn’t inherit her chaotic nature from her Muslim parents, who always taught Asli and her two younger sisters to be careful and to stay out of trouble: “I wasn’t allowed to read the teeny magazines, and we had to really fight to get permission to go to the disco.”

Sevindim’s parents are from Eskisehir, an industrial city in Anatolia, from where they emigrated to Duisburg in 1971. “I still have about 140 cousins and a whole bunch of uncles and aunts living in Turkey,” she says. “One of them is my Aunt Ferya, a deeply religious woman who is completely convinced that people who eat pork never get jealous, which she doesn’t like because she believes that men who don’t get jealous aren’t real men.”

Sevindim describes a woman like her Aunt Ferya in her first book — Candlelight Döner — a novel that tells the story of a Turkish-German family, including the mo-ment when a 20-year-old woman (who just so happens to remind the reader of Sevin-dim) introduces her German boyfriend to

Focused and dedicated: A press conference for the MELEZ.07 Cultural Festival

>

> her parents for the first time. In real life, Asli Sevindim has been married to a German man for 12 years.

“My mother would have rather had her toenails pulled out than see me marry a ‘potato,’“ says the protagonist in Sevindim’s semi-autobiographical novel. “Potato” is a derogatory expression some Turks use to refer to Germans, inspired by the popularity of potatoes as a staple in German cooking — and also because many immigrants find Germans a bit boring. Still, Sevindim’s husband succeeded in winning over her family — including Aunt Ferya. Today, one of Sevindim’s younger sisters is also married to a German, and the families celebrate German and Turkish holidays together.

When asked if her personality is more Turkish or more German, Sevindim replies: “My husband says I’m an Anatolian Prus-sian — because I’m stern, strong-minded, and soft at the same time. I, on the other hand, would describe myself as down-to-earth, uncomplicated, and straightfor-ward.” To that we would hasten to add unpretentious, humorous, and direct. Sevindim believes categorizing people according to their nationality is foolish and only serves to propagate stereotypes. “I think there’s such a thing as a regional char-acter, but not a national one — and I find this confirmed by my everyday experiences,”

Asli Sevindim


53

regards culture and integration as absolutely crucial

Sevindim takes a quick lunch break at the “Haydar Ustanin Yeri” Turkish restaurant in the Marxloh district of Duisburg


Even without a German

Whether on the job or in her role as a cultural director — Asli Sevindim likes to get to the bottom of things and quickly puts ideas into practice

BIOGRAPHYAs early as her high school days, Asli Sevindim, 34, worked at a local radio station in Duisburg. After studying political science at the University of Duisburg-Essen, she began working for the WDR broadcasting company in 1999. In 2003, she became the host of Cosmo TV, and three years later she took over the co-anchor position in the Aktuelle Stunde news program. Sevindim has also made a name for herself as an author: her novel Candlelight Döner — Geschichten über meine deutsch-türkische Familie was published in 2005. In March 2007, Sevindim hosted the 43rd Adolf Grimme Awards, which is one of the most important media awards presented in Germany. She is also a cultural director at the RUHR.2010 organization, where she is responsible for the “City of Cultures” program.


55

passport, she feels like a genuine Ruhr girl

Relaxed and professional: Preparing to go on camera for the news show

she says. “Ultimately, every nation is made up of those who are nice and those who are nasty in temperament, of simple people and complicated individuals.”

Sevindim also doesn’t like it when Ger-mans say foreigners should adapt to German ways. “I really don’t know what that’s supposed to mean,” she says. “Whose ways exactly are we supposed to adapt to? Where is that ideal German? We have in this coun-try a wonderful constitution that applies to everyone. So is someone supposed to tell me what kind of wallpaper I can put up in my house, what I should eat, and how I should dress?” She also gets very irritated whenever Germans complain to her about foreigners: “Obviously these people don’t even realize that I’m Turkish.”

Although Sevindim still doesn’t have a German passport (“dealing with paper-work isn’t one of my strengths”), she feels like a true-blue girl from the Ruhr region — a young woman who’s been shaped by the geography, life, and people in the region around Duisburg. “I love how one city just seems to seamlessly transition into the other here,” she says. “The sheer size of ev-erything here, the great variety, the parks, the laid back people, and the tremendous cultural offerings are just fantastic.” For Sevindim, the 5.3 million people who live in the Ruhr region are like a kind of miniature

Europe — a multicultural mix that serves as an inspiration and shows that one is never alone, but rather always surrounded by people with a wide variety of lifestyles.

PASSIONATE DIVER Sevindim is a passionate diver, so the only other place she could imagine living would be the Maldives, or maybe Hawaii. Before she can get into all that, though, we arrive at the modern studio building in Düssel-dorf’s harbor district. “Sorry, I’ve got to get to a meeting for tonight’s news show, fol-lowed by an internal meeting. And then I have to write up my script and talk with the director,” she says before taking off.

We meet again two-and-a-half hours later, while Sevindim is sitting in front of a makeup mirror and having her hair done. Nothing about her demeanor betrays the fact that in a little less than two hours she’ll be reporting to a television audience of approximately one million viewers, address-ing serious topics including a thwarted terrorist attack in Germany, the death of Luciano Pavarotti, and the disappearance of “Hanna,” a 14-year-old German girl.

“Of course these things affect me — but you have to maintain a professional dis-tance in this job,” she explains. The only time she has ever had to struggle to rein in her emotions was when she had to report

on a major earthquake in Turkey back in 1999. “That’s because some of my relatives were living in the region, so it wasn’t easy for me,” she recalls.

Still, negative feelings and pessimism simply aren’t in the character of this light-hearted lady with big brown eyes. Sevindim says she’s looking forward to “getting to know the Ruhr District even better, now that I’m serving as a RUHR.2010 cultural director. This is really a great privilege for me.” Sevindim plans to do a good job and accomplish something for her region: “We want RUHR.2010 to have a long-term impact on people’s lives here. One of the things I’m hoping to see, for example, is an intercultural opening through institutions like museums, as well as a greater concen-tration of the potential we have in the Ruhr, which would allow us to draw even closer together and become a true metropolis. “

That won’t leave much time for Sevin-dim’s private life: “But my family supports me,” she says. When there’s time between her job and volunteer activities, she enjoys long breakfasts with her husband, or going for a piece of Black Forest cherry cake at her favorite cafe. “Family and food are the most important things — I couldn’t do with-out them,” she says wistfully. Her thoughts are interrupted by a call to go to Studio 1: It’s time for the news. <

>

INSPIRINGRUHR.2010EVONIK MAGAZINE 1/2008


Should Managers’ Salaries In view of the modest increases in general wages and salaries, the high remuneration of top managers has become a hotly discussed topic. Opinions range from expressions of strict non-involvement to demands for the legal capping of top managers’ salaries

DISCUSSION RATHER THAN EN-VIOUS COMMENTSThe debate about managers’ salaries is not an exchange of envious comments but a dis-

cussion of the lack of social solidarity in our country. None of us want to live in a country where people care only about themselves and line their own pockets without consideration for anyone else. Millions of employees have seen how the managers of their companies focus primarily on short-term profit while the employees are treated like cost items that happen to be human. We need to return to a corporate culture of responsibility in which employees receive the recognition they deserve. Their reliability, inventiveness, and commitment are Germany’s most important strengths as a business location. Smart entre-preneurs — and there are many of them — real-ize that the secret of our prosperity is, and has always been, social harmony.

Frank-Walter Steinmeier, Vice-Chancellor and Deputy Chairman of the SPD

HARD TO JUSTIFY I believe that annual salaries in the double-digit millions for top executives of companies listed in the DAX are hard to justify. The guideline should be the principle that a top executive’s earnings should not be greater than 100 times the average salary of the company’s employees. If the average salary in a company is €35,000, the top managers’ salaries should not exceed €3.5 million.

Hans-Otto Schrader, the new CEO of the major mail-order company Otto

LOSS OF THE ELITES

If we treat our country’s elites badly,

we’ll lose them. After all, they’re not bound

to Germany as a workplace.Klaus-Peter Müller, Chairman of the Supervisory Council of Commerzbank from May 2008, who nonetheless believes that some managers’ salaries are too high

FLIGHT

If the government

were to reduce top

managers’ salaries,

there would be an exodus

of managers from Germany

to London or elsewhere.Hans-Werner Sinn, President of the Institute for Economic Research (Ifo), Munich

56 MANAGERS’ SALARIES EVONIK MAGAZINE 1/2008DEBATING


Be Legally Capped?

THE PROPORTIONS ARE OUT OF CONTROL

The problem is that the proportions are out of

control: managers’ salaries are growing spectacu-

larly, while the average salaries of employees

are stagnating. My urgent recommendation is directed at the

business world itself: the companies should show more

sensitivity when they make decisions concerning their top

managers’ salaries.Norbert Lammert (CDU), President of the Bundestag

NO LEGAL LIMITS

In the election campaigns in the federal states, the grand coalition shouldn’t be tempted to take the wrong approach and pass laws that

limit the remuneration of top managers.Jürgen Thumann, President of the Federation of German Industries (BDI)

STRENGTHENING SHAREHOLDERS’ INFLUENCEIt’s up to a company’s owners

to decide how much to pay

their managers. We can talk

about how shareholders can

strengthen their influence in their companies’

annual general meetings, but I think politically

motivated caps on salaries are counterproduc-

tive. Salaries set by the government, uniform

salaries or set prices for bread — that would be

a planned economy, the German Democratic

Republic all over again but without the Wall.

Guido Westerwelle, Chairman of the FDP

SHARED RESPONSIBILITY I don’t want to comment on

individual cases. It would

certainly be helpful if more

managers were to participate

in this debate, which is im-

portant for our society. It’s also necessary for

the labor unions to get involved. In Germany

we practice employee co-determination, with

employee representatives making up almost

half of the members of corporate supervisory

councils. That means both groups bear shared

responsibility for resolving this issue.

Angela Merkel (CDU), German Chancellor

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DPA

57


58 LIVING EVONIK MAGAZINE 1/2008

Virtual BeamingTOM SCHIMMECK discusses augmented reality, a mix of the virtual and real worlds that’s likely to soon be shaping our everyday lives

Tom Schimmeck, 48, fi nds looking into the laboratories of the future fascinating. He has written for the TAZ, Tempo, Der Spiegel, and Die Woche, among others. The illustration is an abstract computer-generated digital composition

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HOW REAL ARE YOU, MR. STRICKER? Dr. Didier Stricker flashes a grin. That’s not a technical question, says the French engineer, it’s a philosophical one. Stricker, 37, is head of the Virtual and Augmented Reality department at the Fraunhofer Institute for Computer Graphics (IGD) in Darmstadt, and he’s always working on the “fringes of reality.” His job is to continually blur the distinction between reality and “virtuality.”

And no, his work isn’t focused on the world’s legions of video game fanatics — or at least not exclusively. Stricker’s area of expertise is augmented reality, or “AR” for short. Augmented reality is giving us a glimpse of what work and communication will look like in the future, when the era of “ubiquitous computing” emerges. Monitors, keyboards and even the computer mouse will quickly become use-less then. New interfaces will be needed to discern the observer’s position and line of sight, perceive his or her wishes and commands, and make information visible. That which comes from the com-puter, Stricker says, should be “immediately incorporated into the real environment.” This means our real world is increasingly going to be mingled with another world, lightning fast and artificially generated — by a computer.

Are we looking forward to this era? And if so, why do we need AR? “Because everything is becoming increasingly complex all the time,” says Stricker, who served as the technical coordinator of ARVIKA (Augmented Reality for Development, Production and Servicing), a large consortium of companies, from Airbus to Zeiss, that were eager to learn what AR has to offer — in the area of service, for example. Take, for example, the search for a way to replace increasingly voluminous manuals and PDF files with visualization on site. That’s of great interest to German engineering firms that export their state of the art products and equipment to locations halfway around the world. But sometimes the equipment won’t run due to some minute detail. “So a support technician gets on a plane and flies to the customer,” says Stricker, “where he turns two bolts and then flies home.” He is convinced AR could be used to quickly and clearly “walk” the users at the site through the needed steps.

The list of possible areas of application seems endless. In the future, architects and their clients would be able to see a new building as it will really appear in its surroundings, and a masonry contractor would be able to see the wall he is about to build — depicted in situ

and with amazing precision. Later, perhaps, when a worker approaches to drill into the wall, the data goggles he is wearing will enable him to see exactly where pipes and cables are located. Using 3D projection, scientists would be able to take part in virtual meet-ings with colleagues, and business people could meet their custom-ers virtually, represented by an “avatar” — a virtual being sus-pended in space that can conduct a presentation or demonstration. That would save a lot of time and gasoline. Is it the precursor to Star Trek-style beaming? “Exactly,” says Stricker, “virtual beaming.”

AR would feed our senses with a wealth of additional information — images, sounds and numbers — and all in real time. Researchers have invested their best efforts in goggles that provide an open field of vision while simultaneously depicting all kinds of additional input for the human eye. To do this, a good AR system must precisely detect and follow the person’s position and line of sight in order to continu-ously adjust to these factors. This is what makes it possible to project a 3D image of a matching teacup onto a real saucer — and to let this virtual cup stay in its position while the observer is moving.

In Darmstadt the researchers are working with increasingly com-plex simulations of shadows and light. Their aim is for a virtual sofa to actually look identical to a real sofa, not like an image of the sofa. They also have developed a system called CAVE, which is a big cube with sides measuring 2.4 meters. In this cube, people can stand and move within a virtual image that emanates from ten projectors in five directions. A famous complex of caves near the city of Dunhuang in China, which was created by Buddhist monks between 400 and 1400 AD, was virtually re-created for tourists, with help from scientists who are experts in restoration.

With AR, moving from the prototype stage to realization of a product will take at least a decade, says Stricker. The driving force is the automotive industry, but also automation companies like Siemens. And the video game industry will soon see to it that the technology becomes widespread, while also bringing costs down. User acceptance also plays a key role. The data goggles need to be lighter, less complicated and improved overall. “People will have to really want to use them.” Decisive factors are attractive and elegant design, explains Stricker in his velvety French accent. Making it possible for image data to appear at the right place, in top quality and the right lighting — “that’s the magic of it,” he says. <


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Treasure from the Deep - Evonik Industries · sources (BGR), which is headquartered in Ha-nover,...

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