Research

Our research areas include:

• Process Design
• Catalysis & Calorimetry & Spectroscopy
  
• Environmental and Human Exposure Analysis
• Chemical Life-Cycle

Our research is guided by a vision of a chemical industry that serves society with innovations based on sustainable process and product technologies. We believe our vision is shared with the chemical industry, governments and society as a whole, but that it is too broad and comprehensive to be addressed by any single actor. Thus, our role is to define and pursue scientific goals that bring us closer to realizing our shared vision. This goal setting is a fundamental research activity; it is driven by our scientific curiosity. To realize our goals, we develop novel scientific experiments, methods and models. These have proven to be of broad and still increasing international interest, and they also address practical problems currently faced by industry and government agencies. Therefore, the S&E Group is engaged in fundamental, interdisciplinary research that addresses practical problems.

Research in the S&E Group is focused on the development of tools and methods that consider a range of different objectives – economic, ecological and health related − during the early design stage of chemical products and processes. Assessments at the early design stage are inherently uncertain, and confronting and dealing with uncertainties in scenarios, models and parameters is an integral part of our work. The group is organized into three main research areas that represent aspects of chemical industry that must work together to enable the design of environmentally benign chemical processes and products. These research areas are illustrated in the figure below.

Our research in these three areas of focus is designed to foster the development of integrative, and at the same time, prospective hazard assessment methods and tools for chemical industry. These will allow more eco-efficient and inherently safe chemical products and processes to be developed at the design stage, within the framework of the entire life cycle of a chemical product.