Introducing our new staff scientific member Arne Hommes

On May 1st, 2024, Arne Hommes started as Assistant Professor with an education profile in Sustainable Chemical Reactor Design and Operation. Arne will be responsible for several courses related to Reactor Engineering in the Chemical Engineering and Industrial Engineering & Management curricula. Arne also will set up his research line in the Green Chemical Reaction Engineering group of ENTEG. His primary areas of interests include the development of green and energy-efficient reactor concepts, utilizing renewable energy sources. Additionally, he aims to apply these concepts to valorize renewable feedstocks such as biomass, waste plastics and CO2 for the production of value-added chemicals and fuels.

Biography
Arne earned his MSc and PhD degree in Chemical Engineering from the University of Groningen in 2014 and 2020, respectively. His doctoral research concentrated on employing microreactor technology to convert biomass derivatives into value-added chemicals and fuels. Following the PhD, Arne undertook two (postdoctoral) research projects at the same university, collaborating with industrial partners (GFBiochemicals and Symeres) to develop reaction engineering concepts for biobased chemicals production. Subsequently, Arne transitioned to industry from 2021 to 2024. As a Process Development Engineer at Cargill in Rotterdam, he worked on novel separation and reaction processes to refine edible oils for food applications. After this, Arne worked as a Researcher and Project Manager at Neste in Porvoo, Finland. His work at Neste focused on converting waste oils and fats to produce advanced biofuels, such as renewable diesel and sustainable aviation fuel. He was particularly active in evaluating the suitability of novel (waste) feedstocks for Neste’s proprietary process, as well as the development of pretreatment technologies for such feeds.