Welcome to the DFG Collaborative Research Center CRC 1615 SMART Reactors

We are facing the societal challenges of transforming economic and production chains from fossil raw materials to sustainable and renewable raw materials. However, these can fluctuate seasonally and geologically in their availability and quality. Society therefore urgently needs processes and reactors that can respond flexibly to fluctuating raw material properties. To enable such adaptation, a very high level of process control is required: pressures, temperatures, concentrations and dispersed phases must be monitored continuously and in situ in the reactors using suitable sensors.

As part of the Collaborative Research Center, we aim to address this issue and enable SMART reactors through basic research. In the future, the SMART reactors will convert sustainable renewable resources into different products (multi-purpose) in a more sustainable way and operate autonomously (self-adapting), which will lead to more resilient processes that are more transferable between scales and locations.

To achieve our vision, interdisciplinary collaboration between process engineering, materials science and electrical engineering with physicists, chemists, mathematicians and data scientists from Hamburg University of Technology and five research institutions enables the focusing of expertise and unique experimental facilities.

Within the framework of this website, we would like to give you an insight into the individual subprojects, publications related to the CRC, upcoming events and career opportunities within the Collaborative Research Center.

 

Check out our CRC video here !

News CRC 1615

13.03.25
The guest from Raleigh/USA gave an inspiring talk on „Exploring Solid-Liquid Interfaces: Insights from Atomic Force Microscopy“ at our CRC seminar, showing how AFM can be utilized to ionic arrangement on solid-liquid interfaces and how this contributes to our understanding for new energy materials.
12.03.25
Today we enthusiastically placed the first prototype of a SMART Reactor in our world's largest vertical MRI for process imaging at the Hamburg University of Technology.
08.03.25
As part of our Collaborative Research Center "SMART Reactors" at the TUHH, we are proud to join the #AccelerateAction campaign to highlight the importance of representation. Let’s celebrate, advocate, and take action—because a diverse future is a stronger future.
06.03.25
We had the pleasure of hosting the Chair of Fluid Systems (FST) from the TU Darmstadt in a CRC webinar at TUHH, where their interdisciplinary team presented their research data management structure.
04.03.25
Professor Irina Smirnova, vice spokesperson of the CRC 1615, was invited to present a keynote lecture on "Responsive Materials for Smart Reactors and Beyond," at the Hybrid Materials 2025 conference in Montpellier.