Catalytic Process Engineering (CPE) Labs

Our Offer

The Catalytic Process Engineering Department at the Paul Scherrer Institute, in collaboration with the Institute for Bioenergy and Resource Efficiency FHNW, offers various laboratories for batch and continuous cHTL and cHTG experiments, from laboratory scale up to 100 kg feed/h scale. The analytical laboratories comprise a wide range of equipment and work in symbiosis with engineering research.

Get in touch with us

For more information or to discuss a collaboration, please contact Prof. Dr. Frédéric Vogel.

Infrastructure

Test Rigs

• HydroPilot (cHTG, 110 kg/h wet feed)
• Salsan (or the investigation of salt separation from supercritical water)
• Salsan II (cHTG, 20 mL/min)
• KONTI-C (cHTG & cHTL, 1 kg/h wet feed, including salt separator)
• KONTI-I (cHTG, variable feed, continuous catalyser tests)
• Hochdruckautoklav (422 mL, 500 °C, 325 bar)
• Catalytic reactor for in-situ XAS at supercritical conditions
• HydroBatch for catalyst pre-tests (30 mL, 550°C, 400 bar)

Analytics

• TOC, DOC, TC, TIC, NPOC, POC, TNb analyser
• Bomb calorimeter 
  
• GC-NPD/TCD
• UHPLC-HRMS (Focus Orbitrap)/MS
• HP DSC
• GPC
• UHPLC-HRMS (Q-TOF)/MS
• GC-FID/Q-TOF
• UV/VIS spektrophotometer
• FTIR-Raman
• IR camera
• Karl-Fischer titrator

Pilot plant for hydrothermal gasification (c) M. Fischer, PSI