Price Winnerin: Katharina Fürsatz

Ms. Fürsatz is a PhD student at the Institute of Chemical, Environmental and Bioscience Engineering (research group future energy technology) and is supervised by Prof. Hermann Hofbauer. Her day-to-day research work is done at BEST, a K1 Centre run under the COMET Competence Centre Programme. For her thesis she works in the field of dual fluidized bed (DFB) steam gasification. She mainly focuses on the role of fuel ash and bed material on the product gas quality obtained during DFB steam gasification. The ash layers, that form on the bed material during gasification have a considerable positive influence on the catalytic activity leading to higher contents of hydrogen and lower tar contents in the product gas.

During Katharina Fürsatz’s research special attention will be given to the effect of different fuels on the layer formation and catalytic activation of bed material. The research in the field of ash layer formation is performed in close cooperation with Swedish partners at Umeå University and Luleå University of Technology, which are leading researchers in the field of fuel ash layer formation.

Katharina Fürsatz will use the price for participation in international conferences (e.g. ISGA 2020 in Nancy, France), research stays at the Swedish University partners and hardware for thermochemical simulations of bed material – fuel ash interactions.