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ePaper created 2013-09-24, 11:56:35 | version 1.25.20
PHYSICAL PROCESS TECHNOLOGY The Physical Process Technology Department is involved in de- veloping processes and process components based on physi- cal and physical chemical principles. Our customers come from sectors such as pulp and paper, metal processing or food industries, and our work for them ranges from the supply of drinking water or energy to integrated treatment, processing and recycling in industrial production. The current main themes Heat storage using thermo-chemical processes Use of sorption systems to remove moisture from gases Drying with integrated recovery of volatile materials Recycling and management of inorganic nutrients Soil-improving substrates by treatment and processing of organic residuals Electrophysical processes and oxidative water treatment Technical design combined with numeric simulation System integration of aseptic processes in the food indus- try and biotechnology Use of electric fields in process engineering applications The main quality criteria in our R&D activity is sustainability. We define this principally in terms of the minimization or sub- stitution of material consumption – above all of non-renewa- ble sources – and the energy efficiency of processes, but also in terms of the efficient use of regenerative energy and the materials made available from recycling processes. Recycling and energy saving result directly in improved economic effi- ciency of processes, meaning that our approach satisfies both ecological and economic demands. One example of this is the development of a process to store thermal energy from waste heat or solar thermics. The intention is to enable availability of heat energy for municipalor industrial use, decoupled in time and space from its source. Potential applications are drying processes in production, the temporary heat supply of build- ings, or the treatment of highly contaminated process waste- water with vacuum vaporization. Our development work on processes and process components extends from initial laboratory-scale characterization and ana- lytics via simulation and software modeling to design and sys- tem integration in industrial applications. For developing and designing our technical solutions, we use the latest 3D CAD design software, which is directly linked by data interface to various numerical simulation programs. For standard modeling we use COMSOL Multiphysics® for theoretical pre-studies of multi-phase processes such as the behavior of solid particles in a fluid flow, and CST Microwave Studio® for the calcula- tion of high frequency electromagnetic fields in cavities and the design of antennas for the production of the correspond- ing electromagnetic waves. From the knowledge thus gained we can proceed to realize demonstration prototypes using the many resources at our disposal – workshops, laboratories and pilot plant facilities, as well as a network of industrial partners. The Physical Process Technology department is staffed by sci- entists from various disciplines – such as process engineering, chemical engineering, food chemistry, mechanical and elec- trical engineering – who work together in multi-disciplinary project teams. Projects may also involve collaboration with specialists from other Fraunhofer IGB departments, such as microbiologists and bioengineers, or from other Fraunhofer institutes, leveraging synergies in expertise to address specific issues. COMPETENCES 4 6