M. Sc. Fabian Hagen

Students of chemical engineering/process technology with interest in process engineering problems and a preference for experimental work. Knowledge of aerosol and/or particle and/or gas phase diagnostics may help you get started but is not required.

Motivation:

Climate-neutral hydrogen production is one of the keys to achieving global climate targets. In this regard, methane pyrolysis is a promising technology based on the thermal cracking of methane into its elements, hydrogen and carbon. If carbon nanoparticles formed during pyrolysis are sold as a high-purity value product, simultaneously the cost of hydrogen production is diminished. Since particle formation has neither been systematically studied nor understood, this thesis is dedicated to a fundamental experiment to investigate the underlying processes.

Task:

Particle formation during methane pyrolysis is to be studied in a flow tube reactor. First, the already working reactor is to be slightly adapted for the experiments. Second, a) evolving particle size distributions and b) resulting carbon nanostructure is to be analyzed as function of pyrolysis temperature using aerosol diagnostics developed at the institute/group. Methane conversion, hydrogen formation rate and intermediate species are to be analyzed with gas phase diagnostics.

Responsible:

Prof. Dr.-Ing. Dimosthenis Trimis