dornburger supports young building materials engineers

This year’s dornburger zement award went to Dipl.-Ing. Alexander Tasch in recognition of the brillianwt dissertation submitted by this graduate of the F.A. Finger-Institute for Building Materials Science (FIB) within the Faculty of Civil Engineering at the Bauhaus University of Weimar. This distinction, which has been awarded annually since 1999, also includes a cash prize, and has in recent years always been won jointly by two graduates. This year there was only one winner, in view of Tasch’s outstanding achievement. The subject of the degree thesis thus honoured is “Copper/iron-oxide ceramics as reactive oxygen storage materials”.

Many technological processes require pure oxygen, which is recovered on a commercial scale using the Linde method, in which O₂ is generated by means of cryogenic separation of air. This process requires high energy inputs and is inefficient. In his degree thesis, Alexander Tasch outlined a new alternative route for supplying technological processes with oxygen without recovery of the latter via the Linde process with its high energy consumption. Tasch achieves this using a copper/iron oxide ceramic material developed by him specifically for this purpose. The dissertation includes not only the relevant theoretical considerations and a survey of the current state of the art, but also the complete production process for this material. In his experiments Tasch could prove a huge capacity and a large number of charging cycles for oxygen in his copper-iron-oxide ceramics. Due to this high performance and novelty, a patent has been submitted for production and application by the Bauhaus University.

A Bachelor’s thesis also brought a cash prize for its author. This award went to Luise Göbel for her dissertation on “Investigations of the effects of fire on polymer-modified hydrated cements”. Concretes with properties enhanced by means of polymer dispersions are generally considered critical in terms of their resistance to fire. Luise Göbel’s Bachelor’s thesis took as its aim the obtainment of scientific knowledge on the actual fire hazard to polymer-modified concretes. She was able to demonstrate, by way of conclusion, that polymer-modified concretes do not have a poorer fire-performance than non-modified mortars or those containing polymer fibres.

With the awards made, the members of the jury – Prof. Dr.-Ing. Horst-Michael Ludwig, Department of Building Materials and Head of the F.A.Finger-Institute for Building Materials Science, Dipl.-Ing. Heiko Theuerkauf, CEO of dornburger zement and Dr.-Ing. Dennys Dressel – acknowledged, in particular, the high practical relevance of these dissertations.

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