Chemical Engineering

Chemical Engineering of functional nanosystems: from molecules to products

Mission of the department of Chemical Engineering (ChemE)

Our Mission is to generate knowledge and educate people in the area of nano chemical engineering to improve the quality of life for a sustainable society, focusing on energy, water, health and environment.

Building upon its proven strength in Chemical Engineering, the Department develops the science and technology of functional nanostructured systems, from molecules up to the design of products and processes.

Scientific and technological breakthroughs are attained through international and multidisciplinary teamwork. Our inspiring and adventurous environment facilitates growth of our students and employees as responsible and innovative personalities.

Spotlights

Cum Laude doctorate degree for Job Boekhoven
The Department ChemE is proud to announce that Job Boekhoven (SAS) has been awarded the cum laude (with distinction) doctorate degree after successfully defending his PhD thesis "Multicomponent and Dissipative Self-Assembly Approaches: towards functional materials".
Click here for more information.
Master Student Vipul Khosla wins First Prize of the UfD-EBN Geo Energy Master Award 2012
On 17^th April 2012, Mr Vipul Khosla has won the First Prize in the UfD-EBN Geo Energy Master Award 2012. The price consists of EUR 6500.
Vipul Khosla is a Master Student Chemical Engineering at the Faculty of Applied Sciences of Delft University of Technology. His Master End Project, entitled “Visual Investigation of Annular Flow Dynamics and the Effect of Wall Wettability “ was carried out in the Department of Multiscale Physics under the supervision of Dr. Luis Portela and Prof. Ruud Henkes. The project is part of collaborative research between TU Delft, TNO, and Shell. Gas is produced through using subsurface wells connected to the reservoir. Some liquids, being water and light oil, are co-produced with the gas. When the pressure in the reservoir is gradually reducing over time, the liquid tends to stay behind in the well, which prevents the further production of gas. This is the so-called liquification of gas wells. Vipul has studied the fluid mechanics of the multiphase flow in a lab model of the well. He has shown how using a hydrophobic coating prevents a liquid film to be formed at the wall, which postpones the onset of the liquification to a significantly lower gas velocity. Therefore using such coatings in real life wells is a promising new technology to extend the field life of gas wells.
The Geo Energy Award is an initiative of the UfD (Universiteitsfonds Delft) and EBN (Energie Beheer Nederland) . EBN is natural gas exploration, production, transportation and sale company owned by the Dutch Government. EBN aims at maximizing the natural gas benefits now and in the future for the Netherlands. Three students from Delft were nominated for the prize, based on their Master Thesis, all on a topic related to new technologies for the Dutch subsurface. The three students were asked to give a summary presentation during a public event in the presence of the jury, chaired by Prof. Fokkema. The contribution by Vipul Khozla was selected to be the most innovative and to have the highest potential impact. The second prize (EUR 4000) was for Floris Veeger (Master Applied Earth Sciences) and the third prize (EUR 2000) was for Andrea van Overveldt (Master Petroleum Engineering).
Publication by Haining An, Stephen J. Picken and Eduardo Mendes (ChemE-NSM) appointed featured article in Soft Matter
Editor's choice: the article entitled "Enhanced hardening of soft self-assembled copolymer gels under homogeneous magnetic fields" by
Haining An, Stephen J. Picken and Eduardo Mendes appeared in Soft Matter, 2010, 6, 4497-4503, has been appointed as a featured article by the Editors of "Soft Matter", the leading journal in the field, and it can now be downloaded for free for a limited time: http://pubs.rsc.org/en/Content/ArticleLanding/2010/SM/c0sm00216j
The ChemE-CE article “ Metal–organic frameworks as scaffolds for the encapsulation of active species: state of the art and future perspectives’ has been identified as a ‘hot article’ for Journal of Materials Chemistry. The article has been highlighted on the blog (http://blogs.rsc.org/jm/), and may also be used in future promotional material or press releases for Journal of Materials Chemistry. In addition, the PDF of the article will be made free for all to access for 4 weeks after publication.
ChemE-OM: A novel process to enhance the efficiency of solar cells has been published in Nature Photonics researchers from the Physics Dept. of the University of Amsterdam and the Dept. of Chemical Engineering at the Delft University of Technology. A novel mechanism leading to an increase of the current was found for closely spaced silicon nanocrystals embedded in glass. Using ultrafast pump–probe laser spectroscopy it was found that adjacent nanocrystals are excited directly upon absorption of a single high-energy photon. The simultaneous excitation of two or more electrons in different nanocrystals can be utilized to significantly increase the current delivered by a solar cell. The publication is online at DOI: 10.1038/NPHOTON.2012.36.
Erik Kelder (ChemE-NSM): Rijden op batterijen (only in Dutch)
Job Boekhoven (ChemE-SAS): Seeding sprinkles of hope
Maarten de Nier (ChemE-MECS) wins Shell Master Award 2011
The ChemE department is proud to announce that Ir. Maarten de Nier has won the Shell Master Award 2011 with his MSc thesis “Photoelectrochemical hydrogen production – thin film bismuth ferrite as photo-electrode material”. He did this work in the Materials for Energy Conversion and Storage group. For more information, click here: Persbericht Shell BaMa Awards , Sfeer-impressie AD website

Professor Kemo Hanjalic was awarded a 3.6 M€ Lead Scientist Grant of the Russian Federation.

Prof. Kemo Hanjalic, emeritus professor in the Multi-scale Physics Department of the Faculty of Applied Sciences of TU Delft, was recently awarded a grant of 150 million roubles (about 3.6 M€) from the Russian government. He is one the 40 scientists worldwide to win this award, among which are two Nobel Prize laureates.
The Lead Scientist grants are intended for the establishment of a research team at a university in Russia, in parallel with the award winners’ research activities in his/her home country. Hanjalic will lead the ‘Laboratory for simulation of energy processes’ at the Novosibirsk State University, in close collaboration with the Institute of Thermal Physics of the Russian Academy of Sciences. The focus will be on computer simulations and laser diagnostics of processes in energy conversion, aimed at exploring novel as well as improving efficiency of the conventional technologies.
Chemical Engineering student Maarten de Nier (ChemE-MECS) makes national final of the Shell Bachelor Master Prize
New book on solar hydrogen production, edited by Roel van de Krol (ChemE-MECS) and Michael Grätzel
This new book, titled “Photoelectrochemical hydrogen production”, describes the principles and materials challenges for the conversion of sunlight into hydrogen through water splitting at a semiconducting electrode. Apart from three chapters by Van de Krol, it includes contributions from Kevin Sivula, Kazuhiro Sayama, Bruce Parkinson, Eric Miller, Scott Warren, Julian Keable, and other experts in the field. More information can be found on the Springer website: www.springer.com/engineering/energy+technology/book/978-1-4614-1379-0. The book is also available on Amazon.com.
Guanglin Wang (ChemE-NSM) received best poster award at Biofuture 2011
Guanglin Wang, PhD student of Dr. Eduardo Mendes (ChemE) in collaboration with Dr. Antonia Denkova and Prof. Bert Wolterbeek (R3) received in November the best poster presentation award for his work on “Polymersomes - promising nano-carriers for radionuclide therapy” . The work was presented at “Biofuture 2011”, an European Biomaterial Congress.
Vipul Khosla en Durgesh Kawale (ChemE MSc students) won first prize “Huntsman Annual Design Challenge 2011”
Vipul Khosla en Durgesh Kawale (ChemE MSc students) have won the “Huntsman Annual Design Challenge 2011” during the NPS11 the first prize (€ 1000) for their process design.
Steven Hoogendijk award for Johan van den Bergh
Johan van den Bergh received on September 17th, 2011 the Steven Hoogendijk award of the 'Bataafsch Genootschap voor Proefondervindelijke' from the mayor of Rotterdam, Ahmed Aboutaleb, praeses magnificus of this society. This prize is awarded biannually for the best PhD Thesis of the Delft University of Technology, this time covering 2009 and 2010.Johan defended his PhD thesis in September 2010. This research focused on the application of DD3R membranes for various energy efficient separation and catalytic processes. Further, he developed a new engineering model to describe the diffusive mixture transport through zeolites. This model bridges the microscopic computational modeling and the macroscopic engineering worlds.
Thesis summary, Bataafsch Genootschap
Picture: Johan receives the award from mayor Aboutaleb.
Breakthrough in search for new quantum dot materials for highly efficient solar cells.
Researchers of the section Optoelectronic Materials at the Dept. of Chemical Engineering at TU Delft and Toyota Motor Company, Europe, have found that a single photon can generate three mobile electrons in layered structures of quantum dots that are coupled in a special way. The unconventional process of carrier multiplication is highly promising for exploitation in a new generation of cheap and very efficient solar cells. The original work in the journal Nano Letters has been highlighted by Nature Materials and Physics Today, see http://www.nature.com/nmat/journal/v10/n11/full/nmat3163.html and http://physicsworld.com/cws/article/news/47533.
Paper Opto-electronic Materials (ChemE-OM) publised on the website of the scientific journal Nature Nanotechnology.
TU Delft: cheap and efficient solar cell made possible by linked nanoparticles
Canan Gücüyener (ChemE-CE) wins FEZA poster award
On the 5th International FEZA (Federation of European Zeolite Associations) carried out in Valencia, Spain(3-6 July), Canan Gücüyener received the award for her poster presentation "Understanding the anomalous paraffin selectivity of ZIF-7 in the separation of light alkane/alkene mixtures" (co-authors Johan van den Bergh, Evgeny Pidko, Emiel J.M. Hensen, Jorge Gascon and Freek Kapteijn).
ERC Starting Grant for Ruud van Ommen (ChemE/PPE)
Dr Ruud van Ommen (ChemE/PPE) has been awarded an ERC Starting Grant from the European Research Council. An ERC Starting Grant is awarded for a period of five years to scientists who lead an independent team or programme and have the potential to become world class researchers. The Grant is about 1.5 million euros. Dr Ruud van Ommen is involved in the use of ultra-thin coatings on nanoparticles. Coated nanoparticles offer future benefits in such fields as catalysis and energy storage and for medical uses. At a fundamental level however, very little is known about how these nanoparticles can be produced under controlled conditions and on a larger scale. Van Ommen aims to change that. The nanoparticles are coated by means of atomic layer deposition (ALD): gas-phase technology from the semiconductor industry used to deposit countless different materials.
UFD Imtech Bachelor Grant for Onno de Haan
The ChemE department is proud to announce that Onno de Haan (ChemE-PPE) is one of the recipients of an Universiteitsfonds Imtech grant in recognition of his B.Sc. thesis on oscillating bubbles in microfluidic networks. Onno de Haan worked on his thesis in a joint project between the department of Multiscale Physics (prof. Kleijn) and our department (prof. Kreutzer). For more information, click here: http://universiteitsfonds.tudelft.nl/?p=433
TU Delft-ChemE ranking #22 by "QS World University rankings"
I am very proud that our department of Chemical Engineering has obtained the 22nd position in the QS World University Rankings of this year!
Realizing that our focus change to nano-chemical engineering started around 2007, with the arrival of 5 new section leaders and accompanying faculty, the prospects for the future look very good.
Thanks to the community of Chemical Engineering for their contribution to make our department so successful,
Prof. Dr. Ernst J.R. Sudhölter, Chairman.
Rubicon Grant for former OM PhD student Kocherzhenko
Former ChemE-OM PhD student Aleksey Kocherzhenko received a Rubicon grant from NWO for a 2-year post-doctoral stay in the group of Prof. Birgitta Whaley at UC Berkeley and study the "Effects of the Environment on Charge and Energy Transport in Molecular Materials".
Paper Self Assembling Systems (ChemE-SAS) highlighted in Nature
A recent paper in Angewandte Chemie about responsive dynamic covalent vesicles by the Self Assembling Systems group has been highlighted in Nature. In the paper, Christophe Minkenberg and coworkers showed how the introduction of dynamic covalent imine bonds in vesicle forming surfactants leads to the formation of vesicles that can be switched back and forth between the bilayer state and isotropic solution in response to dilution or a change in the surrounding pH.
Links:
Angewandte paper: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/anie.201007401/pdf
Nature highlight:
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v471/n7340/pdf/471550c.pdf
Haining An wins "Best Workshop Lecture Award: Physics"
Haining An wins "Best Workshop Lecture Award: Physics" at the NWO Scientific Meeting and Dutch Polymer Days, Veldhoven, The Netherlands, 14 & 15 March 2011. His oral presentation on Magneto Responve Gels was based on the article: "Enhanced hardening of soft self-assembled copolymer gels under homogeneous magnetic fields", H. An, S. J. Picken and E.Mendes, Soft Matter, 2010, 6, 4497–4503.
Top 10 most cited papers Journal Nano Letters
The paper of former PhD student Tuan Trinh on carrier multiplication in PbSe quantum dots belongs to the top 10 most cited papers in the journal Nano Letters
In Spite of Recent Doubts Carrier Multiplication Does Occur in PbSe Nanocrystals
M. Tuan Trinh, Arjan J. Houtepen, Juleon M. Schins, Tobias Hanrath, Jorge Piris, Walter Knulst, Albert P. L. M. Goossens and Laurens D. A. Siebbeles
2008, 8 (6), pp 1713–1718
Publication Date (Web): May 20, 2008 (Letter)
DOI: 10.1021/nl0807225

Job Boekhoven wins NWO Poster Prize
J. Boekhoven, A.M.A. Brizard, N.K.K. Kowlgi, G.J.M. Koper, R. Eelkema, J.H. van Esch Out of equilibrium self-assembly approach towards complexity NWO Scientific meeting on Chemistry related to Physics & Material Sciences/Dutch Polymer Days, Veldhoven, The Netherlands, 14 & 15 March 2011
New book on molecular wires, edited by Laurens Siebbeles and Ferdinand Grozema
This new book, entitled "Charge and exciton transport through molecular wires" brings together the work of leading scientist in the fields of electron transfer, energy transfer and molecular electronics and has been published by Wiley-VCH. Apart from two chapters by Grozema and Siebbeles, the book includes contributions from Mark Ratner, Daniel Frisbie, Tim Swager, Michael Wasielewski and many onthers.
More information on the website of Wiley:
eu.wiley.com/WileyCDA/WileyTitle/productCd-3527325018,descCd-description.html
Aletta Kaas wins Shell Bachelor Award 2011
The ChemE department is proud to announce that Aletta Kaas has won the Shell Bachelor Award 2011 with her BSc thesis "Anodic alumina templates for nanostructured iron oxide". She did this work in the Materials for Energy Conversion and Storage group. For more information, click here: Delta interview, Shell BaMa Awards
YES! Fellowship grant for Andrea Baldi
This month, the Foundation for Fundamental Research on Matter (FOM) awarded the first two YES! fellowships (grants) to the researchers Dr. Joep Pijpers (AMOLF) and Dr. Andrea Baldi (TU Delft, MECS group) The fellowships were awarded in the context of the 'Fellowships for Young Energy Scientists' (YES!) programme, which was initiated by FOM. YES! focuses on promising young researchers who have recently obtained a PhD, who have innovative ideas on the conservation, generation and storage of energy, and who aspire to an academic career in fundamental energy research.
YES! fellowships will give these two talented researchers, Joep Pijpers and Andrea Baldi, an opportunity to develop their knowledge of foundational (physical) energy research. At the same time, they will be able to hone their skills, find inspiration, and gain experience in this field. To this end, they will work at one or two centres of excellence outside the Netherlands for up to three years. Following their stay abroad, they will have the opportunity to conduct research at a Dutch research institute for up to one year. This final year of the YES! fellowship is intended to give an impetus to the process of embedding the knowledge obtained into the edifice of Dutch scientific research. It is a condition of YES! fellowships that the chosen line of investigation in the field of energy research should be new to the Netherlands. Accordingly, this programme will structurally enrich Dutch energy research.www.fom.nl/live/english/news/artikel.pag
Cum Laude doctorate degree for Johan van den Bergh
The Department ChemE is proud to announce that Johan van den Bergh (CE) has been awarded the cum laude (with distinction) doctorate degree after successfully defending his PhD thesis "DD3R zeolite membranes in separation and catalytic process - Modelling and application".
Click here for more information.
Paper Stephen Picken in Commemorative Issue dedicated to Alfred Saupe of the journal Liquid Crystals.
Alfred Saupe was one of the primary scientists in the field of liquid crystals, working on a broad range of topics including NMR, blue phases, biaxial lyotropic liquid crystals, and molecular field theory. The last topic concerns the Maier-Saupe model for the formation of the nematic phase which is a primary example of a mean-field model for describing phase transitions. The recently published commemorative issue of the journal Liquid Crystals gives an overview of the large impact of Alfred Saupe to the field. Stephen Picken (TNW/ChemE) was invited to write a contribution on the use of Maier-Saupe theory to describe the phase behaviour and orientational order of liquid crystal polymers. One aspect concerns Picken's Extended Maier Saupe model which is used to predict the stiffness and strength of high performance aramid fibres like Kevlar & Twaron.
'Orientational order in nematic polymers – some variations on the Maier–Saupe theme', S.J. Picken, Liquid Crystals 2010, 37:6, 977 - 985
http://www.informaworld.com/smpp/content~db=all~content=a923873190~frm=titlelink
Poster Award Viviane dos Santos
The department ChemE is very proud to announce that Viviane dos Santos, who did her Master thesis in CE and NSM, got the poster award at the International Aerosol Conference in Helsinki for her poster entitled
"Preparation of Higyly Active Porous Catalytic Alloy Layers by Spark Mixing and Impaction Sintering". Co-authors: Bart van der Linden, Freek Kapteijn and Andreas Schmidt-Ott
The poster was selected from about 800 posters. The criteria were scientific significance and presentation.