Jaap C. Schouten

"Combining my jobs at NWO and TU/e is truly inspiring. It shows me every day what huge impact science has on society and what important role engineers play."

Jaap Schouten’s research in chemical reactor engineering focuses on three areas.

The research area 'high-gravity high-shear multiphase reactors' focuses on the development of multiphase reactor systems that use rotation to create high gravity and high shear conditions, thus leading to excellent interphase mass transfer, intraphase mixing, and fluid-to-wall heat transfer. Applications are especially in (exothermic) fast reactions that are interphase mass transfer limited, mixing limited, or heat transfer limited. The rotating systems also enable separation processes such as distillation (gas-liquid), extraction (liquid-liquid), and crystallization (liquid-solid). The two main concepts under study are the ‘spinning disk reactor’ and the ‘rotating bed reactor’.

The research area of 'microstructured reactors and devices' focuses on the development and scale-up of microchemical systems that provide intricate geometries with characteristic length scales of 10-100 µm to achieve optimum mixing, mass and heat transfer, (catalytic) reaction, and product separation. The challenge is to explore the potential benefits of these miniaturized chemical systems in terms of e.g. productivity, selectivity, energy efficiency, new reaction pathways, safety, and environmental benign manufacturing. Areas of application include fuel processing and hydrogen production, high-throughput catalyst screening, and chemicals synthesis.

The research area 'catalysis engineering' integrates reactor engineering with catalysis. Here the rotating reactors and microreactors mentioned above are developed into catalytic reactors and investigated by means of kinetic and mass transfer measurements. This improves the understanding of both the catalyst and the reactor to improve them further and be able to model their behavior.

Jaap Schouten studied Chemical Engineering at the University of Twente where he obtained his master's degree in 1983 cum laude. In 1988 he obtained his PhD at TU Delft, again cum laude. He was research manager at the Unilever Research Laboratory (Vlaardingen, The Netherlands) until 1990, when he was appointed assistant professor at the Department Chemical Engineering of TU Delft. In 1994 he became associate professor at TU Delft. In 1998 Schouten was appointed full professor of Chemical Engineering at Eindhoven University of Technology (TU/e). During 2001-2005 and 2008-2011 he was Vice-Dean at the TU/e department of Chemical Engineering and Chemistry, and from 2011-2016 he was the Dean of the department. Since 2017 Jaap Schouten is member of the Executive Board of the Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research (NWO) and chair of the NWO Domain Applied and Engineering Sciences (TTW).

• Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research (NWO), member Executive Board
• NWO Domain Applied and Engineering Sciences (TTW), chair