In September, the Department of Chemical Engineering hosted A/Professor Nicolas von Solms as part of their annual Visiting Engineer Programme. He graduated in 1988 from UCT with a BSc in Chemical Engineering. He went on to do his MSc Eng at Imperial College, PhD at Rutgers University and was a postdoctoral scholar at U.C. Berkeley. He has published 110+ papers in peer-reviewed journals.

He is an Associate Professor in the Department of Chemical and Biochemical Engineering, Technical University of Denmark working in the areas of Thermodynamics and Phase Equilibria; Gas Hydrates; Polymer Technology; and Carbon Capture and Storage. His work uses theory and modelling as well as experiments from lab to pilot scale to solve problems using a process engineering approach.

During his visit, he gave a lunchtime talk to staff and students, titled ‘A Chemical Engineering Approach to Large-Scale Process Challenges.’ 

Abstract of the talk

Many societal challenges in energy and materials require collaboration across disciplines and national boundaries. Because of the scale of operation of many chemical and energy processes, a process engineering approach provides the potential for greatly increased energy and material efficiency. In the talk, he gave examples of process engineering (and green) solutions in the area of CCUS, refrigeration engineering, polymer technology and energy resources engineering. While several chemical engineering fundamentals were touched on, a more-or-less common thread in the work is the development and application of thermodynamic tools based on theory and experiment.