Jürgen Gmehling

Jürgen Gmehling ( born January 13, 1946 in Duisburg), Professor of Chemical Engineering at the Carl von Ossietzky University of Oldenburg.

Biography

He began his career with a professional training as a chemical assistant at the Duisburg copper smelter, before he first studied chemical engineering at the engineering school food and then chemistry at the universities of Dortmund and Clausthal. He received The chemistry diploma in 1970 from the University of Dortmund and a doctorate ( Dr. rer. Nat., Inorganic Chemistry) 1973. Afterwards, he worked as a research assistant at the Chair of Reaction Engineering in the Department of Chemical Engineering at the University of Dortmund, later as a lecturer and associate professor after his habilitation 1982. 1977 bis 1978 Gmehling spent a year with Professor John M. Prausnitz at Berkeley, USA.

Gmehling 1989 was appointed full professor of technical chemistry at the Carl von Ossietzky University of Oldenburg. There he worked at the Institute for Pure and Applied Chemistry ( IRAC ) worked until his retirement in 2011.

Research

The focus of his work is the measurement, collection and assessment of (essentially) thermophysical material properties. The following list outlines some of the work topics on short and sweet, but is by no means complete.

Measurements

• Phase equilibrium data ( vapor-liquid equilibria, liquid-liquid equilibria, solid-liquid equilibria, gas solubilities, heats of mixing, activity coefficients, inter alia, m. )
• Pure component properties ( phase transition heats, vapor pressures, densities, viscosities )
• Reaction kinetics (heterogeneous catalysis)

Data collections

Gmehling began in the 1970s with the systematic analysis of the scientific literature with the aim of establishing a database for vapor-liquid equilibria. The thermodynamic data were used for the development of a new method for assessing the activity coefficients called UNIFAC. This database has been developed and is now known as the Dortmund Data Bank.

Model development

Gmehling developed with its employees and cooperation partners, especially Aage Fredenslund from the Technical University in Lyngby, Denmark, models for the estimation of various thermodynamic and thermophysical data:

• Activity coefficient methods such as UNIFAC (see also group contribution methods) and extensions. For this work, an industrial consortium was launched in which very many well-known German and international companies are represented.
• Equations of state
• GE - models
• Prediction of pure component properties

Software Development

Significant developments are in addition to the implementations of the self-developed methods also

• An expert system for example for tool selection for azeotropic and extractive rectification.
• Parameter adjustment programs gE models and many pure substance equations

Gmehling also working on the investigation and optimization of chemical production such as reactive rectification and membrane processes.

Awards

Start-ups

Gmehling has founded two companies:

• The DDBST GmbH was founded in 1989 in order to continue the work at Dortmund database.
• The LTP GmbH was founded in 1999. Her main field of work is the experimental determination of thermophysical properties.

Publications

Gmehling has published numerous scientific articles in addition to some books. In addition to textbooks on thermodynamics and unit operations to chemical engineering are printed data collections that were published by DECHEMA Chemistry Data Series, and in the Wiley- VCH Verlag ( Azeotropic Data) before all things. These data collections are all generated by software extracts from the Dortmund Data Bank.

Surveying activities

Gmehling is co-editor of three scientific journals and reviewer for several others. For the German Research Foundation as well as for the Czech, Finnish and Slovenian Research Foundation he also carries out expert activities.