Zugl.: Osnabrück, Univ., Habil.-Schr., 2007.

The separation of aqueous and organic mixtures with thermal separation processes is an important and challenging task in the chemical industry. Rising prices for energy, stricter environmental regulations and the increasing demand for high purity chemicals are the main driving forces to find alternative solutions to common separation technologies such as distillation and absorption. These are mostly too energy consumptive and can show limited separation performance, especially when applied to close boiling or azeotropic mixtures. Pervaporation can overcome these thermodynamic limitations and requires less energy because only the separated components need to be evaporated. This separation technology is already well established for the production of anhydrous solvents, but not yet widely distributed in the chemical and petrochemical industry due to some crucial challenges, which are still to overcome. Besides the need of high selective membranes, the development of membrane modules adapted to the specific requirements of organoselective pervaporation needs more research effort. Furthermore, only few modelling and simulation tools are available, which hinders the distribution of this process in industrial scale. In this work, these issues are addressed in a combined approach. In close collaboration with our cooperation partners, a novel membrane module for organophilic pervaporation is developed. A novel technology to manufacture high selective polymeric pervaporation membranes is applied to produce a membrane for an industrially relevant organic-organic separation task. A three step modelling approach ranging from a shortcut and a discrete to a rigorous model is developed and implemented in a user interface. A hydrophilic and an organophilic membrane are characterised for the separation of a 2-butanol/water mixture in a wide range of feed temperature and feed concentration in order to establish a generally valid description of the membrane performances. This approach is implemented in the three developed models to simulate the novel membrane module in industrial scale. The simulations are compared to the results of pilot scale experiments conducted with the novel membrane module. Good agreement between simulated and experimental values is reached.

Künstliche Intelligenz – kaum ein Schlagwort prägt derzeit die Faszination für die digitale Zukunft ebenso wie die Diskussion, wie uns KI helfen kann, unsere Zukunft gut und nachhaltig zu gestalten. KI hat nicht nur als Schlagwort Einzug in unsere gesellschaftlichen Debatten gehalten. Vielmehr kommen wir im täglichen Leben immer mehr mit KI-Anwendungen in Kontakt, bewusst oder unbewusst. Was hat das für Folgen für jede einzelne bzw. jeden einzelnen von uns? Wie wirkt sich der (vermeintliche) Siegeszug von Algorithmen und den darauf aufbauenden Anwendungen und Produkten auf unser Leben aus? Ist KI etwas, was einfach »geschieht«, ohne dass wir es aufhalten können? Oder können wir diese neue Technologie verstehen und gestalten? Redaktionsschluss: 01.09.2021

Diss. Univ. Luzern, 2006. / Buchhandelsausg. der Diss. Luzern, 2006. Bibliogr.

Innovation, digitalization, technology disruption, fast to market are commonly used terms in the technology industry. However, in today’s world, these terms are used to define the state of art of the automotive industry. The onset of innovative vehicle models and the technology-driven vehicle manufacturing in the automotive industry offers many opportunities and an equivalent amount of challenges. Therefore, how an organization reacts to the ongoing technology discontinuities and how an organization transforms its business model to adapt to the changes to sustain in the industry are becoming significant factors in evaluating its strategic value and determining its success. This doctoral research titled ‘Technology-Based Transformation in Automotive Supply Chain – Role of Organizational Development aims to investigate the critical factors of technology-based transformation in the automotive industry using the automotive supply chain as the research set-up to demonstrate the ongoing transformation. This doctoral research further strives to conceptualize an organizational development framework that seamlessly enables organizations to manage technology-based transformation.