Tremendous joy not only at the Faculty of Biochemical and Chemical Engineering (BCI) at TU Dortmund! With the Deutsche Forschungsgesellschaft (DFG) granting the SFB (collaborative research center)/Transregio 63 “Integrated Chemical Processes in Liquid Multiphase Systems”, the Technische Universität now possesses four of these big research projects. The new Transregio deals with the development of new methods to process raw materials for the chemical industry.
“Our success is proof of the good interdisciplinary cooperation within the faculty and with other participating universities”, says Prof. Andrey Górak from the Chair of Fluid Separations at the Faculty BCI, who is acting as deputy speaker of the Transregio. “It gives young scientists the chance to take part in the development of innovative chemical processes for the production of long-chain aldehydes on the basis of renewable raw materials”
In the Transregio the scientists’ research focuses on olefins – long-chain hydrocarbon compounds, which can be obtained from crude oil but also from renewable raw materials. The aim is to add functional groups to these olefins to enable the production of essential basic chemicals like alcohols, aldehydes, esters, carboxylic acids, amines or amides which can then be fed into existing production networks.
The conventional methods are rather inefficient for major industrial applications, as large quantities of the expensive catalyst are lost during the separation of the products. Therefore, the scientists try to find an easier way to isolate the products. In this Transregio solvent systems are to be developed which very easily release the desired products by changing the temperature or adding soap-based substances very easy. In the long term, the scientists hope to replace today’s basic chemicals consisting of crude oil by products based on renewable raw materials.
Besides TU Dortmund and TU Berlin (speaker university), the Otto-von-Guericke-Universität Magdeburg and the Max-Planck-Institute for Dynamics of Complex Technical Systems Magdeburg are also participating. On the part of Dortmund the chairs Technical Chemistry A (Prof. Arno Behr), Process Dynamics and Operations (Prof. Sebastian Engell), Thermodynamics (Prof. Gabriele Sadowski) and Plant and Process Design (Prof. Gerhard Schembecker are also taking part besides the Chair of Fluid Separations of Prof. Andrzej Górak. Over a period of four years the Dortmund faculty gets 2.5 million €. Money that is, among others, used to finance seven research assistants. Overall the DFG funds the Transregio with 8.1 million Euro. The project starts at the beginning of 2010.