Dear students,
there is an exciting new Bachelor/Master thesis coming up soon at the SLA department as part of the Clean Circles project! You can find more details at: https://www.sla.tu-darmstadt.d...ten_adps_sla/index.de.jsp
I look forward to receiving feedback at: lausch@sla.tu-darmstadt.de
Best regards
Max Lausch
Experimental investigation of the dissolution process of iron oxides in oxalic acid
The storage of volatile, renewable energies as one of the unsolved questions of the modern energy economy is the focus of the Clean Circles cluster project. In this context, iron is being examined as an energy source for a climate-neutral circular economy. Part of the concept is the oxidation of iron particles for energy extraction. The resulting iron oxide particles are then reduced using energy from renewable resources to obtain pure iron again and thus close the cycle. The required process steps for reduction are initially separated into dissolution of the particles in electrolytic solvents and subsequent separation.
To examine the relationship between hydrodynamics and mass transfer during these dissolution processes, a Taylor-Couette setup with a specific geometry is used. The experimental setup consists of a concentrically arranged cylinder and fluid-filled rectangular cuvette. By rotating the cylinder along the longitudinal axis, the particles are homogeneously distributed in the fluid. By selecting the flow regime, controlling the temperature of the fluid and incident UV light, control of the dissolution rate of the iron oxide particles used is achieved.
Within the scope of this work, the influence of the oxidation conditions of the particles on the dissolution behaviour is to be investigated experimentally. During the dissolution process, the measured projected particle area changes depending on the reaction conditions. By means of an existing experimental set-up, the range of parameters is to be expanded through the targeted variation of the reaction conditions. Particular focus is placed on the influence of iron oxides and particles from real combustion processes on the dissolution result. Finally, the experimental results obtained will be discussed in the context of existing literature on the topic.
The tasks within this thesis include in detail:
- Literature research and introduction to the topic
- Commissioning of an existing experimental setup
- Determination of suitable reaction parameters and conducting of experiments
- Evaluation of experiments and contextualisation of the obtained results to existing literature
- Documentation of the results