With B2Last®, BASF has developed an innovative bitumen additive that combines both asphalt performance and sustainability: Temperature-reduced paving with a high recycled asphalt content is made possible through the use of B2Last®, while guaranteeing consistent workability. This creates significantly lower bitumen and CO2 emissions compared to standard applications, while the asphalt resistance is also increased, thereby extending the life span of the road. Anne Holzum, chemical laboratory technician, checks the extent to which the Marshall test specimens have deformed as a result of loading in a cyclic compression test. In her right hand, Anne Holzum holds a test specimen with the bitumen additive B2last. In her left hand she holds a specimen without B2last.
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Our Research and Development

Who we are

Our Research and Development

Effective and efficient R&D is a prerequisite for innovation. We are well positioned: With approximately 10,000 employees around the globe, we work on sustainable solutions for our customers every day. We benefit from the growing opportunities that digitalization and supercomputing power offer us.

Our most recent topics and highlights

More and more electric cars are registered worldwide every year. At the same time, the raw materials for the batteries are limited and mining them is associated with negative environmental impact. BASF researchers at the Ludwigshafen site are therefore developing a new chemical process to recycle high-purity lithium from these batteries. This will also avoid waste and reduce the CO2 footprint compared to existing recycling processes.Chemical engineer Dr. Matthias Voges (left) and chemist Dr. Kerstin Schierle-Arndt (right) examine the lithium salts obtained from the new process.

Our research focus

We are a global leader in chemical industry R&D. Our researchers in labs around the globe are working on hundreds of research projects to meet the challenges of our customers and create chemistry for a sustainable future.

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Our global R&D network

Our central research division combines expertise in areas such as chemical synthesis, process development, bioscience, catalysis, analytics and digitalization and is globally organized with research centers in Europe, North America and Asia Pacific. Together with our business- and application-driven research units and development units in our operating divisions, it forms the core of our global Know-How Verbund. 

Another important part of this Verbund is our global network of top universities, research institutes and companies. It gives us direct access to external scientific expertise, talented minds from various disciplines as well as new technologies – and helps us to quickly develop targeted, marketable innovations, strengthen our portfolio with creative new projects, and in this way, reach our growth targets.

Our academic research alliances bundle partnerships with several research groups in a region or with a specific research focus.

Our methods and enablers

BASF has started up a new supercomputer at its Ludwigshafen site. The new BASF supercomputer, named Quriosity like its predecessor, is the world’s largest supercomputer used in industrial chemical research. Significantly more complex modeling, virtual experiments and simulations are possible with its 3 petaflops computing power (1 petaflops equals one quadrillion floating point operations per second). Quriosity has more than 1,000 compute nodes and 3,000 terabytes of storage capacity. The photo shows the rear view of a compute node rack of BASF's new supercomputer.
Digitalization in R&D
We integrate digital technologies into everyday operations and make them an integral part of any R&D project workflow to boost effectiveness of research, increase efficiency and open up new innovation opportunities - and we are supported for example from the supercomputer Quriosity.
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