Automated reactor setup with integrated in situ real-time sensors

• Subject Area: Process Engineering, Technical Chemistry
• Term: Funded in 2024
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 544360563

Process Systems Engineering (SVT) - newly established in October 2022 at the Faculty 4 - Energy, Process and Bio-Engineering of the University of Stuttgart - focuses on soft materials of industrial importance with the aim of uncovering the relationship between internal structural and macroscopic material properties and how processing can be designed or optimized to achieve desired product properties. The goal of industrial processing is to create products with specific functional, textural, and sensory properties from basic materials. The starting materials already have different properties, but these change significantly during processing. Given the complexity of this transformation, systematic investigations on multiple length and time scales are needed to design and operate the next generation of engineered processes and create new types of products with smart functions. To realize the bottom-up multi-scale approach from chemical molecules and internal structures to the engineered process, SVT requires a jacketed and flexibly scalable glass reactor system with integrated state-of-the-art sensors. The probes can be inserted directly into the reactor, eliminating the need for sampling and offline analysis. This enables real-time monitoring of fast processes. With this reactor system, various processes such as mixing and dispersing, crystallizations, chemical reactions, and fermentations can be analyzed in situ and in real time, providing detailed insights for process design, optimization, and control. These types of process units are important in chemical, biotechnology, pharmaceutical, food and other industries. Mid-FTIR spectroscopy is used to track the changes, reactants, intermediates, products, and byproducts that occur during a chemical reaction, providing important information for the design and optimization of chemical compounds, synthetic pathways, and chemical processes. In situ particle imaging and tracking is used to characterize the size, shape, and number of micro-scale structural units such as particles, droplets, and crystals. Conventional in situ sensors such as temperature, pressure, pH, oxidation-reduction potential (ORP), dissolved oxygen (DO), and conductivity are required for additional control of process conditions. Reactor temperature and pressure are controlled by heating and cooling thermostats and vacuum pumps. The reactor system, along with the sensors, is automated and controlled by laboratory instrumentation software that uses various modules for rapid monitoring and recording of output data via a laptop. In this way, process alternatives can be evaluated and the influence of various parameters on mixing efficiency, reaction progress, kinetics and mechanism, and product quality and stability can be studied.

• DFG Programme: Major Research Instrumentation
• Major Instrumentation: Automatisierter Reaktoraufbau mit integrierten In-situ-Echtzeitsensoren
• Instrumentation Group: 1110 Reaktionsgefäße für Niederdruck, (Hydrierung, Katalyse, Polymerisation)
• Applicant Institution: Universität Stuttgart
• Leader: Professorin Dr. Natalie Germann