Dr.-Ing. Mirka Lochmüller

Mirka Lochmüller studied Biochemical Engineering at the University of Technology in Dortmund. She started in 2005 and graduated in September 2010 with a final thesis dealing with the “Systematic Synthesis of Downstreamprocesses for Secondary Metabolites”.

From 2010 til 2014, she was working at the Laboratory of Plant and Process Design on her PhD. In the context of her research, she worked on the optimization of biochemical processes by combining scheduling and process design.

Scheduling of chemical and biochemical processes deals with the allocation of a set of limited resources over time to manufacture one or several products. The aim is to optimize the process according to one or more goals, like reducing costs or meeting delivery dates.

Parameters normally considered when optimizing a schedule are production rates as well as the number and the size of the equipment. The fact that the processing times of the unit operations and consequently the schedule are also influenced by process parameters like for example temperature or pressure is normally neglected.

The objective is to integrate variable process parameters into the scheduling. Hereby, the number of degrees of freedom is increased and the value of the objective function can be improved and new possibilities are generated to be able to meet customer demands according delivery day and production volume. The focus is on the scheduling of bioprocesses. They make very high demands on the scheduling, among other things, because the recipes are complex, batch and continuous unit operations have to be combined and operations often share media and buffer solution

Dissertation

• M. Lochmüller
  Simultaneous Optimisation of Scheduling, Pant and Process Design of Seguential Multi-Purpose Batch
  TU Dortmund, 2016, Verlag Dr. Hut, München ISBN 978-3-8439-3016-1

Paper

• I. Kaplanow,  M. Schmalenberg, I. Borgmann, G. Schembecker, J. Merz
  Tunable Aqueous Polymer Phase Impregnated Resins (TAPPIR®): Investigation of the impregnation stability
  Separation and Purification Technology 190 (2018) 1-8, doi.org/10.1016/j.seppur.2017.08.022

Oral presentations

• M. Lochmüller, G. Schembecker
  Der Einfluss von Prozessparametern auf das Scheduling biotechnologischer Prozesse
  ProcessNet-Jahrestagung und 30. DECHEMA-Jahrestagung der Biotechnologen, Karlsruhe, Germany (2012)

Poster presentations

• M. Lochmüller, G. Schembecker
  The influence of process parameters on the scheduling of biopharmaceutical processes
  9th European Symposium on Biochemical Engineering Science (ESBES), Istanbul, Turkey (2012)