Abstract
The urgent need for a radical conversion of chemical production is described in the context of the drastic violation of time scales for the natural regeneration of resources. Besides renewable energy sources, we need a transition to a completely sustainable production and application of materials and other substances. Decentralized chemical facilities, microreaction technology, and the coupling between energy conversion and chemical conversion will play a crucial role in this process. All these developments must be connected with the ongoing natural global entropy export system. Some general examples for the required future developments in chemical technologies are given and discussed against a background of a vision of a complete sustainable substance management in the future and a technological sustainability in the industrial transition process where powerful bridging technologies are used.
1 Introduction
The general violation of the principles of sustainability by classic industrial production and mining is obvious. Raw materials and energy providers are mainly supplied by mining or related strategies. Despite all efforts for sustainability in mining and reuse of materials [1–3], the exploitation of mineral resources remains an irreversible process. The gained materials and energy are consumed and the products and byproducts are distributed worldwide. It is clear that this strategy cannot be continued for much longer. In one or a few generations – dependent on the type of resource – the sources will be exhausted. New industry is in a similar situation to the developed European economies in the 17th century when wood was the most widely used material – applied for construction of houses, ships, etc., as well as for cooking, heating, and in particular, for metallurgy. The consequences were a large-scale destruction of forests and a huge lack of wood. Knowledge of this problem was the starting point for a new strategy in the use of forests [4]. Using and planting of trees, and using and growing of wood had to come to a steady state. This was the beginning of sustainability in the use of forests. Now, “sustainability” is applied to many fields and, in particular in the use of energy sources [5].
The recent new thinking on the exploitation of mineral oil resources and the production of energy is for the most part at the same stage as forest use was 300 years ago (Figure 1). We have started a conversion process on use of mineral resources to so-called renewable energy sources. Besides energy, we are running into a similar problem in case of use of raw materials. The recycling of some types of materials in households and industry is a step in the right direction. But, we are far away from a general solution for this problem.
The discrepancy between required material and energy resources and their availability evolved to global dimensions over the last few decades. It demands for a fast change of the traditional industrial strategy of consumption of resources. Already the “Club of Rome” identified the global limits of growth, the risks of further unlimited growth, and the unavoidable disasters, which finally have to be expected if no change occurs. Despite the skepticism, there is the hope that a principle change is possible [6–8]. The hope arises from some local or regional successes in the change of human behavior such as the early introduction of sustainable use of forests and from one global example: the knowledge that the destruction of the ozone layer in the stratosphere is manmade and the response to substitute chlorofluorocarbons in both households and industry. This is an important milestone in understanding the possibility of correcting global misdevelopments despite all the is still unknown about the consequences of atmospheric changes [9, 10]. We understand that the future of energy, chemical and material production must not become a black hole with a few small green spots, but it is realistic to think about a complete conversion to a real green industry [11].
After the rapid development of the industry in Europe between the end of the 18th and the middle of the 19th century, the 20th century was marked by a global industralization. This development was accompanied by an extensive use of industrial products worldwide due to global urbanization. Whereas a few generations ago the majority of world population lived in traditional agricultural environments, now most live with the affects of industrial production, due to the distribution of industrial products, global trading, and by a worldwide use of industrial products. Therefore, the global population is now forming a “global industrial society”.
The global change between local rural societies and global industrial society is strongly related to a global change in the ability to regenerate natural resources. Natural resources, which are consumed by a rural society can be over-exploited or destroyed, but they can in principal be regenerated roughly within time spans of some ten and some hundred years. The time for natural regeneration is nearly in the same order of magnitude as their use, as a human life span or the age of many trees. In contrast, industrial mining, exploitation of mineral resources, and fossil energy carriers destroy natural resources, which required between ten thousands and millions of years for their formation. The time scale of regeneration is many orders of magnitude larger. So, there is a strong discrepancy between the time scale of formation of resources and their exploitation. This situation is called the “ecological time-scale violation”.
In the following, the evidence and interest in the time-scale violation by global industralization will be reflected by the comparison of atmospheric and global climate changes in the last decennia and in the last 250 million years. Man-induced and spontaneous natural processes will be compared for their characteristic time-scales and the consequences for the urgent development of new principles in chemical synthesis, energy supply, and material use will be discussed.
2 Energy supply and the second fundamental law of thermodynamics
Each living being as well as each human society consumes energy. Green plants and photosynthetically active bacteria absorb solar energy and convert it into energy-storing substances and heat. Heterotrophic organisms take energy-storing substances and convert this energy into heat. Early human societies used, in particular, wood and burned it for cooking, metallurgy, and other purposes. Industrial societies burn coal, oil and gas, using them for industrial production and release heat.
The fundamental mechanism is always the conversion of higher valuable energy into heat in order to sustain or to develop a dynamic system. This mechanism is a simple reflection of the second fundamental law of thermodynamics: all irreversible processes are connected to an increase in entropy. In closed systems this entropy increase is always connected with a loss of order and a loss of information. Thus, it is a basic thermodynamic requirement to release entropy in order to keep the systemic order in far-from-equilibrium systems and to enhance the information content. All living systems including plants, bacteria, animals, man, and society are far-from-equilibrium systems and have to produce and to export entropy [12–16].
From the viewpoint of information management, this need for an entropy export is the price for sustaining and accumulating information inside a dynamic system [17]. Living beings as well as human societies are thermodynamically open systems. The uptake of different forms of energy and the release of heat are necessary for their internal management [18], for the extension of the system and dissemination of systemic information (Figure 2).
The expansion of each population is accompanied by the utilization of new resources for entropy export. The occupation of new areas and the use of new sources of food mean an expansion of the distribution of systemic data and, at the same time, an enhancement of entropy export by the increasing intensity of energy conversion. The huge development in the human society, which began with industrialization is mainly marked by a continuous development of the resources of entropy export. It began with the total over use of forests and continued with the exploitation of local coal resources. Finally, industrial societies are running into a global mobilization of all available resources of energy: oil from beneath the deep sea; uranium from geological layers of low concentration; and nature gas from pole regions.
But, meanwhile we became aware that the exploitation of energy resources is only half of the truth concerning our entropy production. The other half of the entropy export path is represented by the waste and heat production and by the release of CO2 and other damaging gases into the atmosphere. The relationship between the consumption of fossil resources and the wasting of the atmosphere is well illustrated by regarding both sides of the time-scale violation: on the one hand, we are exploiting natural energy carriers, which have been deposited dozens or hundreds of million years ago. On the other hand, we are converting our atmosphere into a state similar to what it would have been like millions of years ago (Figure 3). The geological and global ecological processes which lead to carbon becoming coal, oil and gas as well as carbonate deposits during the earth history, have been accompanied by a long-term variation of CO2 in the atmosphere, a reduction during the last millions of years and, therefore a sustainable reduction in the natural global greenhouse effect [19–23]. This development is the expression of a long-term self-sustainable effect in the development of the global ecosystem beginning a long time before the appearance of humanity. The formation of a global industrial production system has cut off this self-sustainable natural development and destroyed its results, which have been accumulated over millions of years.
The recent search for substitute fossil energy sources by the so-called renewable energy sources is an attempt to correct this crucial mistake. It means that the wasting on resources for entropy export, which have been accumulated in geological times, will be substituted by a sustainable entropy export strategy.
3 Environmental impact and affected natural relaxation processes on different time-scales
The earth can be regarded as a thermodynamically open system. Many processes are irreversible, i.e., it means that they are producing entropy. But, the earth as a whole can transfer entropy to the universe. Thus, our planet has the possibility to enhance, in general, the level of order, to accumulate systemic information, and to form complex systems by ongoing nonreversible processes because it is able to export entropy. The key mechanism of this global entropy export is the conversion of high-energy photons absorbed from solar radiation into low-energy photons emitted from the earth into the universe (see below). The evolution of living nature, the formation of ecosystems, and the biologically driven development of the atmosphere are consequences of the phenomenon of global entropy export.
The long-time fixation of carbon from CO2 in the form of carbonate sediments and in the form of hydrocarbons and coal is a direct consequence of biological activity over hundreds of millions of years. In the past, this trend caused a strong reduction of CO2 in the atmosphere, a reduction of the global greenhouse effect, of the average earth temperature, and the formation of glaciers. This process also meant a compensation for the slowly increasing solar constant and can be regarded as a global ecological effect for stabilizing the global energy exchange conditions over a long time-scale. Larger changes of the atmospheric CO2 content occurred at the time scales of some millions and up to some tens of millions of years. Ecosystems can be adapted to such changes by selection of species and biocenotic systems at the same time-scale.
During the Ice Age, an oscillation of atmospheric CO2 content with a period of about 100 thousand years accompanied the periodic climate changes. But the CO2 concentration in the atmosphere was always below the recent level. The increase of atmospheric CO2 brings the earth in a unique situation since the beginning of the Pleistocene. Some 150 years of industrial activity has shifted this important global parameter to a value, which corresponds to natural relaxation times of about 106 years. This very serious time-scale violation is a direct consequence of entropy production outside any sustainable entropy export system.
But, energy production and CO2 emission is only one example for the ecological time-scale violation. We have to see the consumption of raw materials from the same point of view: for example, we exploit metal resources formed in the late Paleozoicum (about 250 million years ago), calcium carbonate resources for concrete production from Mesozoic layers (between about 220 million and 65 million years ago), and basalt from the Tertiaer (about 20 million years ago). The exploited resources represent the so-called “Neg-entropy”. They are materials, which were accumulated by natural processes that have been driven by the global entropy export system (GEES) in the past. They have been formed over millions of years and in the same order of magnitude we have to define the natural relaxation times for the natural reconstruction of similar resources. We use them within a few decades and destroy the accumulated order much faster than it had been formed by the biogeological processes.
4 Sustainable substance management
The term “renewable energy” should mean that the entropy production connected with the energy production is strictly coupled with the permanent global entropy export of the earth. This system receives an input radiation power dP(in) of an equivalent temperature of about 6000K (surface of the sun) and exports the same radiation power dP(ex) in the infrared range of the electromagnetic spectrum with an equivalent temperature of about 300K (surface of the earth). This infrared radiation is absorbed by the black cosmic background (3K). Thus, the global energy household is characterized by a correct balance between energy input and energy output. The earth represents a steady-state system, in the first approximation. But, the energy conversion in this steady-state system is connected with a production of entropy dS, which is given by the quotient of converted energy and the process temperature T. In contrast to energy flow, the global entropy flow is not balanced. The resulting global entropy export capacity (dS/dt)cap is given by the difference between the output entropy dS(ex) and the input entropy dS(in) which are defined by the ratios of power dP and the related temperatures:
Thus, all energy production methods which are connected with the conversion of solar energy at short time scales are regarded as renewable resources like photovoltaics, wind energy, water energy, and biogas (Figure 4).
The main problem in the management of the links between these technologies and the GEES is given by the second law of thermodynamics itself. The burning of coal and oil as well as the distribution of raw materials is connected with a decrease in free energy and proceed spontaneously if a certain activation energy is exceeded. In contrast, the accumulation of the produced energy means an accumulation of neg-entropy. This accumulation never takes place spontaneously, but has to be driven by external forces. Therefore, efficient energy storage is a serious challenge. It is the challenge for the creation of efficient, new, and stable entropy export resources.
The central challenge for the chemical industry is the completion of sustainable energy production by sustainable entropy production in the manufacturing and the application of raw materials and chemicals. Sustainability means that all processes used can be applied again and again without fundamentally changing the natural situation, without exhausting the resources, and without irreversible damaging the environment. This means that the challenge for sustainability concerns not only the energy production, but also all cases of material use. A collected raw material is an entropy export resource. The process of distribution is driven by the loss of free energy. The collection of materials and also the material recycling demand for entropy export, for an external driving power.
Real sustainability can only be achieved if not only the energy production, but the complete production can be converted into a sustainable production network. The distribution as well as all assembling and processing of materials has to be coupled with the GEES. The simplest way seems to be the direct coupling of production with biological processes. Biocompatible industrial production, green and white biotechnology, and the substitution of inorganic materials by organic substances are involved in this development. All these processes are fed by biological metabolisms and are, finally, driven by the conversion of sun radiation by photosynthesis. In particular, the substitution of synthetic materials by plant products is a promising strategy for realizing sustainability in material management, and for achieving biocompatibility and ecocompatibility.
5 Sustainability in the development of industrial and social structures
Recently our industry has been confronted with the challenge of an extreme radical conversion process. At the end, a global sustainable production system is required. But, it is clear that this challenge can only be met if efficient development of production, recycling, and the connected entropy export procedures can be achieved. Therefore, it is absolutely necessary to use and to qualify recent industrial methods and systems, even though they are still far from being perfectly sustainable. This concerns nearly all chemical production processes, which are dependent on the consumption of oil or raw materials from mineral resources. The recently applied technologies have to be improved continuously and materials from nonrenewable sources have to be substituted by renewable materials step by step without the loss of the technological skills that are essential. Besides the long-term sustainability of the global economy, we need a “temporal sustainability” for the development of our technical culture.
Despite the urgent need for the conversion of our production and consumption to a global sustainable economy, we have to find “smooth” ways for the conversion of these technologies. We have to avoid uncontrolled break-downs of powerful industrial, economic, and social structures. The chemical industry is in a key position for this in-demand conversion processes. In particular, the strong coupling between energy production and material conversion is a challenge mainly addressed to chemists and chemical engineers. The required bridging technologies have to be developed by chemists and process engineers together with biotechnology experts. An intensive cooperation between chemists, chemical engineers, and biotechnologists is also challenged for the development of the basic concepts for the GEES-based future sustainable production and recycling systems.
Besides the perspective developments, these scientists and engineers are mainly responsible for the development of the bridging technologies. For the preparation of the global conversion process, there will be a need for new technologies moving from traditional unstainable techniques to more sustainable management in the future. This will include a strong reduction in the use of metals, the substitution of metals and other inorganic materials by organic materials, and the substitution of oil-based production of polymers by synthesis and processing of biopolymers. The conversion process requires smaller facilities, smaller reactors, and therefore shorter processing times. A reduction in process temperatures and an improvement in selectivities and yields will require more efficient catalysts and a broader application of biocatalyses.
6 Examples of challenges for the development of chemical methods for the transition to a sustainable industry
6.1 Exclusive use of the natural GEES
Many processes in the chemical industry are only possible due to the application of external energy sources. The application of gas burning, reduction processes by burning coal, electrochemical syntheses as well as photochemical processes are typical classes of energetically driven chemical procedures. Electrochemical and photochemical processes can be operated – in principle – by electrical power, which can be produced without exploiting fossil resources. Coal and natural gas could – in principle – be substituted by graphitized plant products and biogas. There is an increasing pressure to use chemical technologies that allow an efficient use of renewable energy sources (Figure 5).
The conversion of energy production from nonrenewable to GEES-sources could solve the sustainability problem in the energy supply in a new generation of industrial chemical processes, if the global efforts for the development of energy production from renewable sources are enforced and energy-consuming processes in chemical industry are strictly fed by energy from these sources. Much more difficult is the coupling of material recycling with GEES-processes. Here, we are confronted not only with the substitution of processes, but also with the substitution of materials and substances. The enormous diversification in the production of chemicals and materials must correspond to a spectrum of suitable recycling strategies. An alternative strategy could be represented by an approach in which the chemical diversity of products will be limited in future in order to simplify recycling processes. Probably, the conversion of industrial chemical production in the framework of a global conversion to a sustainable economy will include a radical change in the materials used and in the design of many technical systems.
To realize a complete sustainability in the use of materials, our future material management has to include a perfect technical recycling or a natural recycling on a short time-scale. These demands can only be met for many products by radical changes. But, we have already been doing this in some cases. On the one hand, the substitution of metals and other inorganic materials by polymers in many traditional products is a step in this direction. But on the other hand, there is an increasing use of a large spectrum of chemical elements in highly developed materials, as for example, in alloys and in electronic and optoelectronic devices. For these products, elements with very low mean frequencies in the earth’s crust are required, and they are included in small amounts in very large numbers of produced devices and systems and distributed globally. The exploitation of the rare reservoirs and the application in many small products is a typical process of entropy production. From the viewpoint of element distribution and availability, the resources present the state of a higher order (lower entropy), and the distributed materials in the products present the state of a lower order (higher entropy). Finally the order is completely lost after the period of use of the devices and the deposition in the form of waste.
The final burning of the used polymer devices and the generation of CO2 and water mean a direct coupling of the used organic materials with the network of natural recycling. The release of water and carbon dioxide is connected, in principle, with the natural processes of regeneration of the atmosphere and the oceans on a short time-scales in contrast to the exploitation of oil and coal sources in the synthesis of plastic materials, which is nonsustainable and connected with the drastic ecological time-scale violation. The use of organic material from cultivation of living beings, for production of technical materials, and their final conversion into CO2 and water can be sustainable as long as the regeneration capacity of the biosphere is not overstretched. Green plants and photosynthetically active bacteria [24–27] are the natural tools for reaccumulating atmospheric carbon by use of the GEES. It can be assumed that this biological mechanism will efficiently help to solve the problem of atmospheric CO2 content in near future, when we will have learned to avoid the over-use of the fossil carbon resources and to substitute conventional technical materials by materials from biological sources [28]. It seems to be much more difficult to realize a coupling between the recycling of the nonorganic materials and the global biological recycling systems, when we remember that we are currently using nearly all elements of the periodic table.
Sustainability in the management of materials means that a massive use of a certain inorganic raw material from a localized geological source has to be accomplished by a localized deposition technique for the same amount of the same material. This contradicts not only the traditional technical principles, but also the principle of spontaneous regeneration of an original state because the recollection of distributed materials always means an increase in free energy. A coupling with natural geological regeneration and recollection processes can be excluded – at least on a shorter time-scale. Biogeological processes such as bioprecipitation, sedimentation, and geothermic processing are the only natural ways for the regeneration of the most inorganic resources. But they are working on large time-scales, solely.
6.2 Biomimetic principles instead of biomimetic products
Despite the complex and sophisticated biochemical networks in living cells and organisms there are some obvious fundamental principles in living nature, which can be used as examples for organizing sustainability in future industrial production and consumption. They are given as follows:
Living beings produce entropy constantly. However, they have efficient ways for exporting it into the environment, whereby this entropy export is directly coupled with the GEES (Figure 6). It is not possible to develop technical systems that work without entropy production. But, they have to be coupled with the recent solar energy flux [29, 30]. Future developments for chemical facilities and technologies have to be based on an efficient GEES-coupling.
All living systems are based on individual cells, ecosystems on individual living beings. They are organized by use of decentralized structures [31–33]. This means that raw materials and energy are accumulated locally and byproducts as well as entropy are also released locally. In contrast to the current industrial experience that a larger facility is more economic than a set of smaller facilities, we need small distributed devices for chemical and biotechnical processes [34]. The conversion of substances and the supply of special materials have to be connected with their applications. The future needs devices and processes for decentralized chemical processing. Microreaction technology will be an important strategy for realizing decentralized chemical processes [35, 36].
This demand corresponds well with the recent development in the production of electricity from renewable sources. Solar panel installations on millions of roofs and the thousands of wind mills instead of more large-volume nuclear or coal power plants are typical examples of the trend of decentralization in energy production. An analogous development will become necessary for chemical conversion and for connection of energy consumption and production in chemical processes with the generation and storage of electrical energy. The plurality of small- and medium-sized biogas facilities might be a mistake from an ecological point of view. However, from the viewpoint of the need of distributed facilities for a connection of energy production and (bio)chemical synthesis, it is a promising step in the right direction.
Raw material is normally taken by organisms from regenerable sources in the local environment. The technical culture has to come to a similar system of material regeneration and complete recycling [37, 38]. Therefore, concepts like “biorefinery” and “industrial metabolism” have been developed [39, 40]. In living beings, this principle concerns the “bulk” raw materials like CO2, water, nitrate, phosphates (autotrophic organisms) and carbohydrates, fats, proteins, and vitamins (heterotrophic organisms) as well as essential trace elements like different metals. In well-working ecological systems, the bulk materials are available in high quantities. They are either omnipresent or some components of the local ecological system are producing them efficiently. In contrast, the nonbulky raw materials require a great effort, which means a high entropy production and export. That is why they are “expensive” and are applied only in small quantities. The different heavy metal ions, which are found in the active center of enzymes, are a typical example of this (Figure 7). They are very important for highly specific and highly efficient biocatalytic procedures. But their low prevalence in the natural environment corresponds to a low concentration in living beings. But, the atoms are located in a molecular architecture, which is best adapted to assist, specify, and enhance their catalytic potential. An analogy would be that, future chemical industry requires enzyme-analogs nanomachines, which are operated with a minimum of catalytic active heavy metal atoms. Therefore, production chains for catalysts must to be developed which are able to extract the essential rare elements from the natural environment – i.e., from a very low concentration level.
Byproducts and products have to be introduced completely into natural recycling networks after use. They must be released in a form which allows a re-feeding into natural and technical process chains on a short time-scale. This is a challenge to produce designs and concepts for production which would work without nonregenerable byproducts. The reuse of CO2 [42] is only one aspect of this.
6.3 Storage and protection of unused entropy export resources
The natural excess of the global entropy export capacity should be used for generation of new entropy export resources. This is the responsibility of this generation to secure the future of the next generation. Our current lives and our industrial potential could only be developed in the past by an extensive exploitation of nonregenerable natural entropy export resources. We should consider future activities for forming new entropy export resources as a compensation for the consumed natural resources of our recent and the preceding five generations. We have to turn our systems of waste deposition into systems of deposition of accumulated and sorted long-term resources (Figure 8).
The accumulation of resources is a fundamental natural and social principle for the enhancement of adaptability. Mankind has to be aware that natural conditions will change in the future. Apart from exhausting natural resources, we will be confronted with rising earth temperatures, rising sea level, increasing atmospheric convections, redistribution of rainfall, volcano outbreaks, earthquakes, and so on. We need resources which can be activated quickly in case of global disasters, if we want to secure mankinds future under the conditions of increasing world population. Therefore, we have to accumulate entropy export reserves in different forms as quickly as we can. Following the example of living nature, it is highly recommended to prefer a decentralized deposition of these reserves and to organize them in highly diverse forms. This demand contradicts the classical approach for organizing a chemical industry. It is assumed that even at this point concepts for a future massive application of automated microreaction technology become a powerful strategy for an alternative approach.
6.4 “Bridging technologies” for technological and economic sustainability in the transition process
Nature is also teaching us that a necessary adaptation, that each break of paradigms, needs time and should be organized as smoothly as possible, if major disasters are to be avoided. Hence, we cannot expect that the required conversion of chemical production can be managed immediately and in one big step. In contrast, it need to have “technological sustainability”, i.e., it means that the next two or three generations have to be able to continue the supply of the whole spectrum of essential industrial products. Bridging technologies are required, which enable us to master the transition between the traditional and the future sustainable fabrication methods. Looking at the typical time-scales for the development and use of chemical facilities and equipment, we have to accept that this process will last several decades.
There are some particularly urgent requirements for this bridging period, which are given as follows:
Reduction in the consumption of heavy metals by the substitution of metallic construction materials by organic materials and of mass catalysts by molecular, nanocorpuscular, and metal-organic systems.
Development of electrochemical techniques for decentralized chemical use of electrical excess energy for accumulation of entropy export reserves by coupling of energy, energetic material production [43, 44], and accumulation of distributed raw materials, using the advantages of coupling of electrochemical and biotechnical processes [45–50].
Synthesis of efficient catalysts, development of flow chemistry-based production techniques and production of formic acid [51–55], methanol, and hydrocarbons [56–61] by the use of temporal excess generation of electricity and under use of atmospheric CO2; coupling of this electrochemical CO2 fixation [62] with the production of fuel [63] and of key organic intermediates based on C1 chemistry [64–66], but also on ethylene [67, 68] and the probable [59, 69] supply of acetylene and higher hydrocarbons (Figure 9). Promising research is on the way for optimization of electrodes and electrolyte conditions [70–76], on solvents [77] for electrochemical fixation as well as on catalyst development [61, 78–80], and investigations on the use of microreaction technology for electrochemical CO2 conversion [81].
Development of photochemical synthesis units using the solar radiation: distributed automated mini-plants convert photonic energy into chemical energy stored in fuels and chemicals.
Development of efficient extraction or deposition technologies for heavy metals and nonmetallic trace elements from waste water and sea water by use of excess energy from renewable sources.
7 Conclusions
The comparatively fast transition from the preindustrial to the industrial society within about four generations was only possible by the development of technologies for exploitation of new sources of raw materials and energy. The consequence was an ongoing decoupling between the natural entropy production and entropy transport system and the industrial entropy production. As a consequence, the recent industry is based on the permanent development and exploitation of new sources. This has lead to the violation of sustainability in survival conditions in global dimensions and has had effects on geological time-scales. Therefore, a change in paradigms is not only demanded for energy production but also for all industrial developments and manufacturing.
For the transition, a temporal sustainability is required, which includes an approach to the entropy export situation in the preindustrial society on the one hand and a compatibility with recent technologies, industrial and social structures, on the other hand. Microreaction technology is in an important position in the search for new technological concepts and will mainly support decentralized production and recycling as well as the coupling between chemical conversion of materials with energy production, energy storage, and export of entropy by the permanent natural global energy flow from the sun over the earth’s surface to the cosmic background.
About the author
J. Michael Köhler studied chemistry at the universities of Halle/S. and Jena. After his dissertation on electrochemical effects in microfabrication (1986), he led projects on submicron photolithography at the Institute of Physical Technology in Jena. During a research stay in Dortmund (MPG) in 1991, he dealt with chemical waves in gels. In 1992, he obtained his habilitation in General and Physical Chemistry from the University of Jena. In the same year, he became the head of the Microfabrication Department, and in 1994 he became the head of the Microsystem Department of the Institute of Physical High Technology in Jena. Since 2001, he has been a full professor for Physical Chemistry and Microreaction Technology at the Technical University of Ilmenau. His research activities are focused on the connection between chip reactors, cell screening in microfluidic systems, biomolecular technologies, nanomaterials, and nanotechnology.
The continuous support for research on microreaction technology in Ilmenau by the German Environmental Foundation (DBU) is gratefully acknowledged. I like to thank Andrea Knauer (Ilmenau) for correction of the manuscript.
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