The Catalysis Engineering team focuses on the development & demonstration of new catalysis and reactor engineering concepts devoted to sustainable technologies with emphasis on process intensification, feedstock efficiency, and reduction of both energy usage as well as the influence of human and industrial activities on the environment. In the team advanced functional porous materials are developed. This contains structured catalysts (metal-organic frameworks, covalent-organic frameworks, and zeolites), as well as materials for separation, membranes, sensors and electronics. The team develops multi-phase reaction systems (gas-liquid, liquid-solid) and multi-functional systems (combinations of different reactions, separations, electro- and/or photocatalysis).
Competences
• Synthesis of zeolites and MOFs and their membranes, as well as many other structured solid porous materials primarily for applications in catalysis, adsorption, electronics and separation.
• Physicochemical characterization of solid catalysts including in-situ and operando techniques such as textural analysis (BET, all kinds of gas and vapour sorption), temperature programmed techniques (TPR, TPD, TPAD), SEM, TEM, IR and Raman spectroscopy, XPS, synchrotron X-ray spectroscopy, second-harmonic generation and multiphoton fluorescence microscopy, spectroelectrochemistry, as well as ultrafast pump-probe spectroscopy for photo-excited processes.
• Catalyst performance testing in different reactors (PFR, CSTR, batch reactors, microreactors) under steady- and unsteady-state operations
• Break-through adsorption and membrane set-up for evaluation of gas separations
• Chemical reaction engineering
• Energy-relevant catalysis and separation (new technologies for oil refining and petrochemistry, methane activation, exhaust gas cleaning, CO2 separation, olefin/paraffin)
• Alternative raw materials (activation of CO2, production of chemicals from renewables)
• Photo- and electrocatalysis by nanoporous materials for solar fuels generation
