Heat-sensitive products such as battery components or pharmaceutical formulations are dried at reduced process pressures. This prevents overheating and thus destruction of the usually expensive products. The process pressure is often well below 100 mbar, depending on the final moisture content to be achieved. The rising vapour can entrain fine particles from the bulk material being dried. These particles must be separated in order to prevent contamination of the downstream equipment. This also allows the high value products to be recovered. Particle separation is achieved by means of filtering separators (often surface filters).
These are currently sized according to the design principles for surface filters under ambient conditions. However, this results in over- or undersized filter surfaces. This in turn can result in unstable filter operation, higher costs and increased energy consumption.
In order to improve the sizing of surface filters at low pressures, a number of  filtration behaviour experiments will be carried out.

In the context of this work, the aerosol produced will first to be characterised in terms of  raw gas concentration and the particle size distribution at different absolute pressures at a constant filter inflow velocity. The cake formation behaviour will then be investigated. This involves measuring the differential pressure at different absolute pressures on a surface filter medium. The height of the generated filter cake will be determined using a laser scanning microscope (LSM).

What I can offer you:

• Your own workplace in an office and in the laboratory at the MVM
• Regular communication about progress, results and problems
• Contribution of your own ideas to the thesis

Your tasks would be:

• Brief familiarisation with the basics of gas cleaning
• Start up the pilot plant
• Experimental study of differential pressure
• Calculation of the theoretical differential pressure incl. literature search

What you should bring with you:

• Interest in working with complex laboratory equipment and measuring instruments
• Interest in the subject area and enjoyment of experimental work
• Good communication skills
• Goal-oriented, structured and careful work
• Flexibility and a high degree of independence
• Basic knowledge of MATLAB is an advantage

If you are interested in this work (or in specific individual work packages), I would be happy to hear from you. I would be happy to tell you more about the topic in an interview. You can start at any time.