In November, two young scientists from the Department of Molecular Kataylse headed by Prof. Walter Leitner received awards for their final theses.

One of them is Katrin Köhnke, PhD student in the Multiphase Catalysis' group headed by PD Dr. Andreas Vorholt, who received the DECHEMA Student Award for her master's thesis on November 29.

During her studies, the young scientist achieved outstanding results and convinced the jury.
In her master thesis entitled "Crystallization as a recycling concept in the methoxycarbonylation of oleic acid methyl esters", Katrin was working on recycling catalysts.
For this work she has now received the DECHEMA Student Award.

Köhnke explains the core of her work as follows: "The recycling of catalysts is always a special challenge in homogeneous catalysis because all components are dissolved and separation is not easy. However, it is very important from both an economic and ecological point of view to use the full capacity of the catalysts, which are often produced at great expense. 
Product crystallization is a particularly elegant recycling option because it works under particularly mild conditions. This saves energy costs and is very gentle on the catalyst system. In addition, the product is obtained as a solid and in very high purity, so that it can be directly reused. A good example is methyl oleate. It is obtained from renewable vegetable oils and is particularly suitable for our method due to its solubility properties in methanol. Of course, it can also be applied to other compounds."

Katrin Köhnke wrote her master thesis in 2018 at the Department of Technical Chemistry in Dortmund under the supervision of Norman Herrmann, Dr. Thomas Seidensticker and Prof. Dieter Vogt. Köhnke would like to thank all three of them for their excellent support, but above all Prof. Vogt, who suggested her for the award and was very supportive.
The award ceremony itself took place during the DECHEMA general meeting in Frankfurt.

The entire MPI CEC team congratulates Katrin Köhnke on her great achievement.