Structured Catalytic Microreactors and Catalysts

Albert Renken studied chemistry at the Technical University of Hanover, obtained his Ph.D. 1968 and his habilitation 1973 in technical chemistry with a work on transient process control for the optimization of chemical reactors. From 1973 to 1977 he lectured at the Technical University of Hanover and was group leader at Hoechst AG in Frankfurt, Germany. Since 1977 he is a professor for chemical reaction engineering at ETH Lausanne, Switzerland, his research areas being: polymerization technology, heterogeneous catalysis, transient process control of chemical reactors, and microreaction engineering. He is author of over 350 scientific publications in journals and books and of numerous patents. From 1992 to 2000 Professor Renken was science councillor (Forschungsrat) of the Swiss National Science Foundation (SNF), and from 1996 to 2000 he served as chairman of the European Federation of Chemical Reaction Engineering Working Party.

Volker Hessel, born 1964, was appointed Vice Director R&D and Head of the Chemical Process Technology Department at the Institute for Microtechnology Mainz GmbH (IMM) in 2002. His department focuses on mixing, fine chemistry, and energy generation by fuel processing using microstructured reactors. He obtained his Ph.D. from the University of Mainz on organic chemistry in 1993, investigating structure-property relations of supramolecular structures. After having been appointed Group Leader for Microreaction Technology at the IMM in 1996, he became head of the newly founded Department of Microreaction Technology in 1999. He is author of more than 90 peer-reviewed publications in the field of organic chemistry and chemical micro process engineering, 200 papers in total, three books and 15 patents.