Laboratory for Chemical and Thermal Process Engineering

From the laboratory to the technical process - the transfer of chemical production processes to industrial scale is the focus of chemical and thermal process engineering. The development and optimisation of individual process steps are just as important as the dimensioning of the associated apparatus and a holistic process consideration in order to find economically, technically and ecologically optimal solutions.

The laboratory is equipped with experimental apparatus and plants in different scales from a few grams to the miniplant scale with modern process measurement and control technology, on which practical experiments on chemical reaction engineering and the basic operations of thermal process engineering are carried out in teaching. Examples are reaction kinetic measurements, investigations on heterogeneous catalysts or experiments on the separation of substances with rectification, membrane processes, adsorption and crystallisation. The laboratory also has various measuring methods for physical-thermodynamic material data, which form the engineering basis for process design. The experimental equipment is supplemented by software for design, process simulation and modelling.

In addition to teaching, the laboratory is used for applied research within the framework of theses, projects, cooperations and research contracts. Extensions and adaptations of the existing facilities or flexible experimental set-ups are realised as needed.

Research and current projects

The following research and projects are currently being carried out on the premises:

• Gas separation and purification by adsorption and membrane processes
• Melt crystallisation processes
• Application of ionic liquids in process engineering
• industrial use and storage of hydrogen, especially in connection with sustainable carbon carriers
• thermodynamic-physical substance data for separation processes and reactions, e.g. calorimetric measurements of dissolution, melting, crystallisation and reaction enthalpies, solid-liquid phase equilibria.
• Separation processes in aqueous-organic solvents by nanofiltration and reverse osmosis.
• Melt crystallisation for the purification of monomers from plastics recycling.
• Measurement of solid-liquid phase equilibria and enthalpies of dissolution/crystallisation