Doctoral Defense Kevin Hoppe
In his thesis, Mr. Hoppe dealt with depth filters in air pollution control. The operating characteristics of such filter media are strongly dependent on processes at the microscopic level, which have so far been difficult to access through experiments or simulations. As part of his work, Mr. Hoppe was able to generate previously inaccessible experimental data on particle deposition within filters using X-ray computer tomography methods. In addition, a novel approach was developed to model these processes. The model was confirmed using the previously inaccessible data. The approach is characterized by fast computation times, enabling its use in optimization algorithms, which was successfully demonstrated. In the future, the developed methods can be applied to filter media tailored to specific applications with reduced energy consumption and high filtration efficiencies.