Jan Jozef van Deemter

Jan Jozef van Deemter (born March 31, 1918 in Kellen ; † October 10, 2004 in Bussum ) was a Dutch physicist and chemical engineer.

Life

Van Deemter was born to Dutch parents in Kellen, Germany, near the Dutch border. He studied physics at the University of Groningen , where he received his doctorate in 1946. He then briefly worked at the Philips Laboratories in Eindhoven and at the Institute for Soil Mechanics at the University of Groningen, before joining research at Royal Dutch Shell in 1947 , first in the theory department and four years later in the chemical engineering department. Due to his research at the Institute for Soil Mechanics in Groningen, he also received his doctorate in applied mathematics from the University of Amsterdam in 1950 with Bartel Leendert van der Waerden (dissertation: Theoretische en numeriekebehäling van ontwaterings- en infiltratie-stromingsproblemen , German translation: Theoretical and numerical treatment of Drainage and filtration problems).

From 1955 to 1957 he was at Shell in Houston, where he worked on catalytic cracking and liquefaction, and on his return he became department head for research on oil refining and later for bitumen research. 1968/69 he led research in chemical engineering in the laboratory of Shell in Emeryville, California and then became head of production research at Shell laboratories in Rijswijk. In 1972 he became director of engineering at the main laboratory in Amsterdam. In 1978 he retired.

plant

He is known for the Van Deemter equation in chromatography. He published around 20 papers on applied mathematics, mechanics, liquid flow (including the theory of the vortex tube , chromatography (between 1952 and 1957) and chemical reactors and chemical engineering. In 1949 Shell came up with an idea similar to gas chromatography, but without a solid phase (the amount of gas to be analyzed was mixed with inert gases and these were removed again in separate vessels). The research direction was taken up by other scientists at Shell, in particular AIM Keulemans , who was influenced by Archer Martin , and FJ Zuiderweg, head of the Research on distillation, who realized that the work at Shell could be used for the theory of gas chromatography (in particular the HETP concept, Height equivalent to plate ). Van Deemter of the theory department and Zuiderweg started working independently on the equation and then worked together Van Deemter came up with problems in the chemical industry engineering with pillars. Van Deemter found an old 1945 report at Shell by A. Klinkenberg on liquid-liquid chromatography and found it to be applicable to gas-liquid chromatography. The same theory was published independently in 1952 by NR Amundsen and L. Lapidus. A first internal report by Zuiderweg and van Deemter appeared in 1954 and after further experimental data were collected (by Keulemans et al.) The work of van Deemter, Zuiderweg and Klinkenberg appeared in 1956. Van Deemter presented the results in 1956 in the USA, among others at the Gordon Research Conference. The equation was named by Keulemans in his book on gas chromatography from 1957 only after van Deemter (without consulting him beforehand). Van Deemter's last work on gas chromatography was an invited talk at the second symposium on gas chromatography in Amsterdam in 1958.

Fonts (selection)

• JJ van Deemter, FJ Zuiderweg, A. Klinkenberg: Longitudinal diffusion and resistance to mass transfer as causes of non ideality in chromatography , Chem. Eng. Sci., Volume 5, 1956, pp. 271-289 (van Deemter equation)

literature

• LS Ettre (Ed.): 75 years of Chromatography a Historical Dialogue, Elsevier 1979, pp. 461–465 (brief biography of van Deemter and description of his work by himself)

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Life data from the album Academicum zu van Deemter, University of Amsterdam
2. ↑ Jan Jozef van Deemter in the Mathematics Genealogy Project (English)
3. ↑ Amundsen, Lapidus, J. Chem. Phys., Volume 56, 1952, p. 984