5 4 The world is changing as never before. More than ever, the present is revealing just how fragile our planet’s ecosystem is. The global population is growing, natural cycles have been broken and the consequences of climate change are being felt. In no other era in the earth’s history have humans had such a great impact on our planet. Nevertheless, the global community wants each and every individual to be able to live in a healthy environment, with intact flora and fauna – both now and in the future. A future worth living in can only be attained if humankind and the animal and plant kingdoms live in harmonious balance – just as nature has been teaching us through millions of years of evolution. This must not be an unattainable utopia; rather, it must be the goal of responsible provision of life’s necessities. The ambition of Festo is to make a decisive contribution to improving quality of life for the current and future generations around the globe. Innovative technologies and constant learning from nature will literally be essential for survival. If ecology, economy and social responsibility work together intelligently, a sustainable future will be possible in which the earth’s resources are conserved and carbon dioxide emissions reduced. This requires us to be guided by nature’s example: nature holds a treasure trove of biological knowledge, only a minute fraction of which has been discovered to date. For more than thirty years, the learning company Festo has seen biology as a source of inspiration and a teacher. Over the years, the bionics experts have created and developed a multitude of technological innovations. Bionic thinking is also creating a new kind of methodical competence that gives rise to previously unimaginable solution spaces. The eternal cycle of life – almost everyone is familiar with this phrase. We are also familiar with the blood circulation in our bodies or the water cycle of the earth. Can this impressive principle created by nature be transferred to our global economic system? Most definitely! If we can manage to transform our current economic system into a well-balanced circular economy, innovation spaces will emerge that will be of benefit both to people and to the environment. “All things change; nothing is lost,” wrote the Roman poet Ovid in his Metamorphoses, presumably shortly after the beginning of our common era. A circular economy also means carbon dioxide-neutral production, with con- sumption of resources reduced to an absolute minimum: a dynamic industrial cycle that is holistic and balanced. The idea behind this is to cultivate organic matter in an energy-efficient way as a basic biological substance so that raw materials can be extracted from it and processed into products. These should ultimately be able to be returned to the natural cycle – and be “transformed” into water, earth, air and energy in accordance with the pre- Socratic doctrine of the four classical elements. In today’s language: the production of the future is to be organised in such a way that the raw materials used will be completely recovered in closed cycles, from the design stage to dismantling into individual components. An example of industrial biologisation is the new photo-bioreactor by the name of PhotoBionicCell. With expertise, know-how and components from Festo, biomass from various species of algae can be cultivated in a closed cycle – in a highly efficient, resource-saving automated process. In photo- synthesis, the vegetable algae cells convert daylight and carbon dioxide from the ambient air into chemical energy carriers and organic materials. The resulting substances can then be used as basic materials for pharmaceuticals, packaging, food, fuel or cosmetics and can finally be recycled in a climate- neutral way: unlike petroleum-based products, they only release the carbon dioxide that was previously extracted from the air and bound in the bio- reactor. Living cells are thus set to become the factory of the future in the photo- bioreactor. “This offers an exquisitely convenient definition of the cell: it is the technical form of life,” said the botanist, microbiologist and natural philosopher Raoul Heinrich Francé (1874 – 1943), who discovered the so- called edaphon – the totality of microorganisms living in the soil. Alluding to the photosynthetic capabilities of plant cells, this pioneer of modern biotechnology described the plant kingdom as the inventor of practically all technical developments. We are now in a position to harness this potential by merging the biological and physical worlds in productive processes. Digitalisation, artificial intelligence and quantum sensor technology are indispensable companions of the biological transformation. With these methods, data from bioreactors can be optimised within a very short time. Only when the automated cultivation of biomass has proved reliable, cost-efficient and of consistent quality can its bioproduction become marketable on a large scale and achieve the desired environmental effects. As an open learning company with expertise in bionics, Festo is able to master this complexity and set new forms of industrial production in motion. The company’s goal is to increase the productivity of its worldwide customers and partners, also in the pioneering field of biologisation. A new dynamism is in the air – for which Festo is prepared with technology, innovation, education, knowledge and responsibility, and on the basis of which we intend to constantly further develop. Prologue A new dynamism In balance Into the future with sustainability Thinking in cycles Water, earth, air and energy A bioreactor by the name of PhotoBionicCell Cells as the factory of the future On a large scale
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