Tim Thiedemann completed his master's degree in chemistry in 2022. During his master's thesis, he worked on the simulation and modeling of biogas plants and the kinetics of anaerobic fermentation processes. Moreover, he dealt with different downstreaming and utilization options of biogas as well as the capture of CO2. Currently, he is working as a PhD student in the research group “Photocatalysis and sustainable feedstock utilization” at the Carl von Ossietzky University in Oldenburg. His research areas are process development, carbon capture, and biomass-derived fuels to evaluate new and climate-friendly energy resources.

Results indicate that the addition of the two materials directly increased benthic fluxes of alkalinity and other respective weathering products such as calcium and silicate compared to the control experiments. These enhanced fluxes were considerably higher for calcite compared to olivine additon. The main driver for enhanced and natural weathering is undersaturation with respect to the dissolving minerals which appears to be governed by microbial activity.

In the oxic laboratory experiment, very low pH values (~5.6) produced by presumably cable bacteria at ~1-3 cm depth in the sediment led to strong calcium carbonate dissolution. This microbial activity lead to additional TA fluxes that partly disguised enhanced calcite dissolution. Enhanced dunite weathering was indicated by slightly enhanced sedimentary Si fluxes, although this proved difficult to discern from the natural background flux arising from biogenic opal dissolution. Under anoxic conditions as well as in the benthocosm experiment the increased fluxes were more distinguishable from the natural background. 

The overall natural complexity of the sediment chemistry combined with the alteration of the sediments during the experiments complicate a clear disentangling of natural and enhanced mineral weathering. Further investigation of these sedimentary systems along with field experiments will be necessary to provide estimates on the feasibility of benthic weathering as a realistic OAE and climate change mitigation measure.

Michael Fuhr is a PhD student in geochemistry at GEOMAR Helmholtz Centre for Ocean Research Kiel. He researches the possibilities of accelerating naturally occurring weathering in marine sediments to enhance the long-term storage of CO2 in the ocean. His main topics include geochemical analysis, experimental geochemistry and geochemical modelling.

Michael Fischer heads a subgroup „Crystalline Microporous Materials“ within the Crystallography & Geomaterials Research group at the Faculty of Geosciences, University of Bremen. His research employs computational chemistry methods at different levels of theory to study the structures and properties of crystalline materials. Current work, funded by the DFG through a Heisenberg fellowship, focuses on the investigation of zeolites and related materials for the removal of emerging organic contaminants, especially pharmaceuticals and personal care products.

Maura Mancinelli is a postdoctoral researcher at the Department of Physics and Earth Sciences at the University of Ferrara, where obtained her PhD in Crystallography and Mineralogy in June 2023. During her studies, she conducted research at the MackGraphe Research Center of Mackenzie Presbyterian University in Sao Paulo, Brazil, and the Department of Aquatic Sciences and Assessment of SLU in Uppsala, Sweden. Her major research fields include crystallography and crystal-chemistry of zeolite-like minerals and their synthetic analogues, mineral physics, environmental applications (such as zeolites for water remediation technologies), material sciences, and catalysis (such as acid sites in zeolites and crystal structures of catalyst supports).

Prof. Dr.Andreas Hartwig Studied of Chemistry and doctoral thesis at Cologne University; Postdoc at Twente Universiteit, The Netherlands; since 1992 scientist at Fraunhofer-IFAM; since 1998 foundation and head of the department “Adhesives and Polymer Chemistry”; 2006 Habilitation at University of Bremen for Macromolecular Chemistry, followed by Professorship in 2012; since 2007 Deputy Director of Fraunhofer-IFAM;  between June 2009 and July 2010 acting director of Fraunhofer-IFAM; Research interests: adhesive bonding, adhesives chemistry, adhesion science, fibre reinforced plastics, thermosetting polymers, renewable raw materials, debonding on demand, ecological aspects of adhesive bonding, supramolecular concepts, nanocomposites, adhesive bonding in medicine Independently on the source of raw materials, adhesives need to have balanced relation between adhesion and cohesion beside fulfilling numerous other requirements.

Suelen Barg is a professor at the Materials Resource Management Institute, University of Augsburg, leading a research group towards the development of advanced materials solutions based on ceramics and 2D Materials with a focus on sustainable and digital materials development. Prior to her current appointment, she was a senior lecturer and group leader at the University of Manchester, specializing on 2D Materials, particularly MXenes and their processing into functional devices.  She has obtained a doctoral degree in ceramics colloidal processing from the University of Bremen, followed by postdoctoral trainings in the areas of graphene-related 2D materials and bio-inspired composites at Imperial College London

Maria von Einem is a PhD student at the Hybrid Materials Interfaces group (HMI) of the Bremen Center for Computational Materials Science (BCCMS), University of Bremen. Coming from biomimetics (B.Sc.) and space engineering (M.Sc.), her interests are sustainable solutions for environmental problems. Her research work of her doctoral thesis is about wastewater cleaning applications of small pollutant molecules on TiO2 surfaces and how the environmental conditions influence this process. The findings can help to design new devices for wastewater treatment on earth and on long-duration missions in space likewise.

Fabio Pietrucci is associate professor in the faculty of physics at Sorbonne University since 2014. After receiving his PhD from the University of Milano-Bicocca, he conducted research at the International School of Advanced Studies in Trieste and at the Centre Européen de Calcul Atomique et Moléculaire in Lausanne. He leads a research group that develops and applies computer simulation strategies to study transformation mechanisms in chemistry, materials science and biophysics. The main tools include molecular dynamics, free-energy calculations, and physics-based kinetic models. The main applications include reactions in solution, crystal nucleation, and protein-ligand interactions.

Dr. Michaela Wilhelm received her PhD in chemistry from Carl-von Ossietzky University Oldenburg (Germany) in 2001. Since 2002 at the University of Bremen, she is now group leader of the "Polymer-derived Ceramics" group of the Advanced Ceramics Group, where she simultaneously coordinated the DFG Research Training Groups PoreNet (GRK 137) and later MIMENIMA (GRK 1860), in which her research was also embedded. Her research focuses on the development of highly porous, multifunctional ceramics and hybrid materials derived from organic-inorganic polymers such as polysiloxanes and polycarbosilanes for applications in separation and energy conversion technologies as well as catalysis.

Martin Eickhoff is the head of the research group Solid State Materials at the Institute of Solid State Physics, University of Bremen. In his work he focuses on growth and characterization of wide band gap semiconductors and their hetero- and nanostructures as well as novel quantum materials for the application in chemical sensors, biochemical sensors, optoelectronics and nanophotonics.

Ana Luiza Silveira Fiates received her diploma in materials engineering from Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina- Brazil in 2020.  Since 2020 she has been working at the Institute for Microsensors, -actuators and -systems (IMSAS) at the University of Bremen as a research associate and PhD candidate. Her main research field is porous materials, in special silica aerogels integration and characterization in µfluidics for biological and catalytic applications. She also worked with metamaterials for acoustic sensors, and two photon polymerized porous structures in chips.

Dr. Christina C. Roggatz is a Freigeist Fellow and Research Group Leader for Dynamic Ecological Chemistry at the University of Bremen since 2022.
She was postdoctoral research associate in Marine Chemical Ecology at the Energy & Environment Institute, University of Hull, UK (2018-2022) and hold a PhD in Chemistry from the same university.
After her B.Sc. studies in Biology at the University of Bremen, she pursued a Erasmus Mundus M.Sc. in Marine Biodiversity & Conservation at University of Bremen (Germany), Galway Mayo Institute of Technology (Ireland), Université Pierre et Marie Curie Paris (now Sorbonne, France) & Universidade do Algarve/ Centro de Ciências do Mar (Portugal).  

Kevin Kuhlmann is a PhD student at the Chemical Process Engineering group at the Center for Environmental Research and Sustainable Technology, University of Bremen. After his bachelor studies in the field of biomimetics and a research internship at Columbia University (New York City, USA), he finished his master’s degree in production engineering in 2019 focusing on computational fluid dynamics. Within his PhD project he tries to gain deeper understanding of the processes within catalytic reactors, which are key for the production of chemicals as well as the storage of energy in liquid and gaseous carriers.