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Presentation of the MegaWATT Research Award
Dr. Jana Zimmermann has won the MegaWATT Research Prize, which is awarded annually for outstanding doctoral dissertations or postdoctoral theses in the field of technical thermodynamics.
The MegaWATT Research Prize is awarded annually by the Scientific Working Group for Technical Thermodynamics (WATT) for outstanding doctoral dissertations or postdoctoral theses in the field of technical thermodynamics in German-speaking countries. This year, the prize was jointly awarded to Dr. Jana Zimmermann of Clausthal University of Technology and Dr. Thomas Specht of the Rhineland-Palatinate University of Technology Kaiserslautern-Landau. The award ceremony was presided over by the WATT chairs, Prof. Dr. Sabine Enders and Prof. Dr.-Ing. Tobias Fieback, at the 2024 Thermodynamics Colloquium in Stuttgart.
In her dissertation, Dr. Zimmermann focused on the thermodynamic-mechanical modeling of gas solubility in semicrystalline polymers. In her research at the Chair of Technical Thermodynamics under the supervision of Prof. Michael Fischlschweiger, she developed a new model that, for the first time, consistently accounts for the temperature-dependent morphological properties of polymers in the calculation of gas solubility. This model enables precise prediction of gas solubility in semicrystalline polymers and has been successfully applied to various types of polyethylene (LLDPE, MDPE, HDPE) as well as their blends with ethylene and CO2. Of particular note is the systematic experimental correlation of gas solubility data with polymer morphology and molecular architecture, as expressed by the bivariate distribution of molecular weight and degree of branching for the CO₂ and polyethylene system.
Dr. Zimmermann’s work represents a significant advance in the field of polymer thermodynamics and offers far-reaching applications, particularly in industrial gas separation and materials development.
