Sub-Coordinators: Prof. Dr. Gabriele Sadowski, Prof. Dr.-Ing. Andrzej Górak

State of the art

The combination of distillation and energy efficient unit operations such as organic solvent nanofiltration (OSN) or melt crystallisation to integrated hybrid separations promise tremendous synergies and potential for increasing resource efficiency as well as decreasing operating and capital costs. However, there are some challenges in the design of hybrid separations that are hindering their wide-scale industrial application, such as large number of structural and operational degrees of freedom. In addition, process models for crystallisation and OSN are only based on empirical equations and require large a-priori experimental determination of all parameters.

Research goals

In this work a four-step design method for hybrid separation is developed, which can handle the complexity of integrated system and does not need detailed a-priori OSN or melt crystallisation experiments. The applicability of the method is shown in two cases studies. Firstly the separation of close boiling isomeric mixture of long chained aldehydes, and secondly the separation of high-boilers from a hydroformylation mixture is investigated. Furthermore, needed tools such as rigorous process models and a multi-objective optimization tool are developed. In addition, predictive models for layer melt crystallization are developed and successful validated with experiments.

Dissertations

Beierling, T. Separation of isomeric compounds using layer melt crystallization. Technische Universität Dortmund, 2014.
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Micovic, J. Hybrid separations combining distillation with organic solvent nanofiltration and melt crystallisation. Technische Universität Dortmund, 2014.
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