Promotion Dr. Mathias Betz
On February 18, 2025, Dr. Matthias Betz successfully passed his doctoral examination and defended his thesis on the topic “Production of gasoline-like paraffins from ethylene”. In his work, Matthias Betz dealt with concepts for producing gasoline from ethanol. Ethanol can be converted to ethylene using a well-known process, which can then be converted to longer-chained olefins in a downstream heterogeneously catalyzed oligomerization. These can be added to the gasoline either directly or after hydrogenation. Since ethanol can also be produced from residual materials, gasoline components that can be added in large quantities would be available in an efficient process. The only process in this chain that is not yet operated commercially is the ethylene oligomerization. In his work, Dr. Betz examined the dependence of the properties of the produced olefins on the process conditions, the catalyst composition and the production process.