The research activities of the group Physical and Chemical Process Engineering (PCP) are focused on the analysis and design of efficient process systems for the production of valuable products (chemicals or energy) from raw materials. Both process analysis and process design can only be accomplished adequately if the considered process systems are investigated carefully with regard to their multi-level structure, as illustrated in Figure 1. The plant level of each production process can be decomposed into several process units, each consisting of a number of interacting phases. Each phase can be represented as a distributed particle population, i.e. an ensemble of interacting single particles such as molecules, crystals, bubbles, etc.

Figure 1:Survey of research activities of PCP group, including the junior research group Population Dynamics and the junior research group Portable Energy Systems (Otto-Hahn group).

With regard to this multi-level structure, process analysis is a top-down procedure, dealing with the modular decomposition of larger entities into smaller units, while process design is a bottom-up task, aiming at the aggregation of functional modules from lower to upper levels in order to generate a complete production system. For both tasks, analysis and design, one needs quantitative information for all relevant mechanisms involved at the different process levels. For this purpose, in all their research projects, the group tries to identify adequate mathematical process models from suitable experimental data which are collected from well-defined set-ups in the group’s own labs or from external partners (academic and industrial).

All projects of the PCP group are fully embedded into the MPI’s project area structure which is outlined in the overview of this status report. As summarized in Figure 1, the group contributes to three project areas, namely population balance systems (i.e. the particle population level or single particle level), integrated processes (i.e. the process unit level), and coupled processes (i.e. plant level).

Junior Research Group Population Dynamics

Web page of junior research group population dynamics

Otto Hahn Group Portable Energy Systems

Web page of Otto Hahn Group portable energy systems