Ghent Metropolitan Area
Prof. dr. ir. Steven De Meester is associate professor within the Department of Green Chemistry and Technology of the Faculty of Bioscience Engineering of Ghent University. His educational tasks involve different (parts of) courses such as waste treatment, thermal operations, process intensification and chemical engineering. Prof. De Meester leads the Laboratory for Circular Process Engineering, a team of around 25 researchers that focuses on better chemical engineering in the circular economy, with focus on pretreatment and downstream processing. This is important, as it is clear that waste is heterogeneous and mechanical and chemical recycling technologies are often very sensitive to certain contaminants. The group brings fundamental science to the processes used in waste management companies, as well as bringing in more innovative approaches. He has a lab equipped with separation processes at small pilot scale related to S/L and L/L extraction, distillation, precipitation, air classification/windsifting, friction washing, shredding & sieving, etc. One of the key topics is the removal of impurities from plastic waste streams, for example related to washing, delamination and deinking of plastic waste and even further, removal of additives by using solvent based techniques. Other topics include purification of phenolics and short & long chain fatty acids from organic waste. More information on the Laboratory for Circular Process Engineering can be found on the website: www.lcpe.ugent.be Since 2022, Prof. De Meester is active as part-time professor at Maastricht University, Chair of Circular Plastics. Before, he studied bioscience engineering, environmental technology, at Ghent University and graduated in 2008. Afterwards he obtained a PhD related to the Prospective Sustainability Assessment of Technologies (FP7 PROSUITE). He was also post-doc and project developer related to the Capture initiative (https://capture-resources.be/). During this period he was also active in industry within the company OWS nv.
Assistant Professor in chemical engineering in the circular economy.
http://www.r2t.ugent.be/ http://www.resourcerecovery.be/
Sustainability Assessment, Engineering, Certifications, etc.