The subject of this experiment, which is supervised by the Chair of Industrial Chemistry (TC), is the production of styrene from ethylbenzene. Styrene is further processed in industry to polystyrene, a mass plastic known from everyday life. The experimental apparatus is a simplified model plant of the complete industrial process on a laboratory scale, a so-called "miniplant". It contains many components that give an impression of the professional practice of the chemical engineer.

The homogeneously catalyzed oxidation of ethene to acetaldehyde is carried out in a two-stage process on a miniplant. The experimental plant is operated with an excess of oxygen (variant A) and a shortage of oxygen (variant B) in order to investigate how the regeneration of the catalyst solution affects the ethene conversion of the reaction.

This lab experiment is a heterogeneously catalyzed reaction using propene metathesis as an example. First, a heterogeneous contact is prepared by impregnating an inorganic support (Al2O3) with the catalytically active metal salt (perrhenium acid). After subsequent activation by calcination to form the metal oxide, propene is catalytically converted.  By systematically varying the experimental conditions according to Box-Wilson's method, the optimum operating point of the plant is to be determined. The improvement in space-time yield compared with the starting point of the experiments is to be indicated.

A prerequisite for the manufacture of a chemical product is first of all a chemical reaction of the starting materials in a chemical reactor. In order to be able to design and operate this reactor optimally, knowledge of the behavior of chemical reactors is indispensable. Almost every chemical reactor can be traced back to the basic types (or combinations thereof) presented in the practical experiments TC11 and TC 14. The aim of the practical course is to introduce the behavior of the basic types of chemical reactors on the basis of a model reaction for a stirred tank reactor, which is operated discontinuously and continuously.

A prerequisite for the manufacture of a chemical product is first of all a chemical reaction of the starting materials in a chemical reactor. In order to be able to design and operate this reactor optimally, knowledge of the behavior of chemical reactors is indispensable. Almost every chemical reactor can be traced back to the basic types (or combinations thereof) presented in these practical experiments. The aim of the practical experiment is an introduction to the behavior of the basic types of chemical reactors using a model reaction for a tubular reactor.

The first goal of this experiment is to learn about the representation of ternary mixtures in triangular coordinates and the graphical possibilities for performing balances in such a diagram. Some examples will be used to measure equilibrium data. Then, a four-stage countercurrent extraction is first designed by a graphical stage construction and then the procedure is reproduced in a laboratory apparatus with the operating data obtained in the process. The values obtained theoretically and those obtained in practical operation are compared and the efficiency of the laboratory apparatus is determined.