Department of Chemical Engineering

CEPIMA

Centre for Processes and Environmental Engineering :

CEPIMA focuses its R+D+ work and on the use and development of methods and tools to support decision-making and improvement of chemical processes and the transformation of natural and productive resources. CEPIMA's area of specialization is the modelling, simulation and optimisation of processes for the design, integration, operation and control of processes and supply chains and the use and development of systematic and automated procedures for the resolution of associated problems

Metodology :

CEPIMA develops methods and tools to solve design and operation problems under multi-objective criteria (economic, environmental and social impact) considering the multi-participant nature of these problems (analyzing the different actors through game theory) and their multi-scale dimension (from the molecular level to the management of supply chains) and applies them to the solution of problems related to the improvement of processes, their efficiency, and their integration within the circular economy paradigm.

Applications :

CEPIMA addresses problems of management and coordination of productive resources, energy integration, production planning, process supervision and control, failure detection and diagnosis, uncertainty forecasting and management, etc. Currently, CEPIMA has two important lines of development and improvement of waste treatment, recovery and revaluation processes:

  • Water. Advanced oxidation processes (AOP: photocatalysis, ozonation, Fenton and photo-Fenton...). Treatment of recalcitrant pollutants of emerging concern (CEC). Adsorption processes of drugs in water. Kinetic modelling and operation optimisation.
  • Gases. Capture and separation of CO₂ and fluorinated gases. Use of activated carbons, MOFs, porous polymers, 3D matrices and ionic liquids. CO₂ revaluation and methanol production processes from CO₂ and renewable energies.

Relevant equipment :

CEPIMA has the following equipment and facilities, which are used both in its research projects and to provide services to companies and institutions:

  • Pilot plant. Reactor: 13.5 L glass tank and 1.5 L photo-reactor. Radiation source: Philips Actinic BL TL 36 W/10 1SL LAMP (UVA-UVB). Recirculation system: centrifugal pump (Iwaki Magnet Pump, MD-30RZ-220, 1-16HP-220V). Sensors: pH (Hamilton Polilyte HTVP 120), irradiation (Sglux UV_Surface_A_4- 20mA_cable), temperature and dissolved oxygen (Hamilton Oxysens). H2O2 dosing: peristaltic pump (Watson Marlow, OEM 313 24V). Automation: PLC (Siemens SIMATIC S7-1200) and SCADA (InTouchR® software).
  • Analysis laboratory: Total organic carbon analyzer (TOC) (Shimadzu TOCVCSH/CSN). High Performance Liquid Chromatography (HPLC Agilent 1200, with UV-DAD array detector). UV–vis spectrometry (Hitachi U-200).
  • Computational Lab: High-performance scientific computing platform, featuring an AMD Ryzen 9 9950X3D (16C/32T), 96 GB of DDR5 memory, and 6 TB of NVMe storage, intended for numerical simulation, data analysis, artificial intelligence, and the execution of large language models (LLMs).

Planta pilot de gasificació

Contacts :

MOISÈS GRAELLS SOBRÉ

moises.graells@upc.edu

Scientific output :

https://futur.upc.edu/CEPIMA

Group website :

https://cepima.upc.edu/

 

CEPIMA joined forces with the research group NEMEM in order to establish the SGR group, ENCORE