Biography of the ARS laboratory
The Applied Raman Scattering (ARS) laboratory has been headed by Andreas Braeuer since January 2005. From January 2005 since March 2007 it was named "Process Diagnostics" group and had been a research group at the institute of engineering thermodynamics at the department of bio- and chemical engineering at the Friedrich- Alexander Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg (FAU).
In April 2007 Andreas Braeuer became board member of the directors of the Erlangen Graduate School in Advanced Optical Technologies (SAOT), which was established in November 2006 within the German Excellence Initiative at FAU. At the same time and in addition to the "Process Diagnsotics" group he built up the ARS laboratory as one of the SAOT research laboratories. Today the ARS laboratory and the "Process Diagnostics" group are split only formally but are nearly identical in fact.
The scope of the laboratory
The main scope of the Applied Raman Scattering laboratory is the development of special and tailored optical Raman-based (mainly but not solely) diagnostics for advanced process technologies in chemical, biological and medical engineering. Meanwhile non Raman-based optical measurement techniques are also covered by the laboratories expertise such as elastic light scattering techniques or absorption and emission techniques.
Often advanced process technologies go along with high pressure, high temperature, short residence times, turbulence, non-stationary operation conditions and limited optical access. Therefore the reliable and optimized operation of advanced processes must not purely relay on theoretical considerations which cannot account for all the above mentioned influences. Consequently the combination of in situ advanced diagnostics with advanced processes is the only possibility to analyze the interconnected intermediate steps which define the functioning chain of the respective processes. Time scales and inhomogeneities are accessible, if imaging measurement techniques with high temporal and spatial resolution are applied. Especially the simultaneous multi-parameter detection allows to capture the mutual interaction of different mechanisms, like for example flow and mixing. The interpretation of the resulting insights permits targeted operation and optimization of the respective process technologies.
Today the ARS laboratory is setting the state of the art in fast chemical imaging techniques, which are based on the Raman scattering effect. This is true with respect to