Heinrich-Schubert award for young scientist Markus Buchmann
Awardees Anna Thielen and Dr.-Ing. Markus Buchmann with Prof. Fieback (Dean of Faculty of Mechanical, Process and Energy Engineering). Photo: TU Bergakademie Freiberg / Ralf Ditscherlein
B.Sc.-Student Anna Thielen and Dr.-Ing. Markus Buchmann have been awarded with the Heinrich-Schubert prize of the Faculty of Mechanical, Process and Energy Engineering of TU Bergakademie Freiberg.
Since 2019 the award is given to students and doctoral students who, with their research projects, made a significant contribution the advancdement of processsing and recycling technology of minerals. The prize is associated with a funding of 500 Euros each and was handed over at today's recycling-conference. With the ceremony, the Faculity commemorates the former holder of the chair of processing technology, Prof. Heinrich Schubert (1926-2018).
Groundbraking research for excellent bachelor- and doctoral theses
In her Bachelor's thesis B.Sc. Anna Thielen dealt with the sorting of conductor films from lithium-ion batteries. She was closely involved in the current technology development in this research area at TU Bergakademie Freiberg. The aim of her research was to improve the separation of aluminium and copper foils in aero current sorting. For this purpose, different shredding machines were examined with regard to their suitability for standardising the particle shape, compacting the foil pieces and the resulting effect on the sorting success. In addition to theoretical considerations on the sinking speed of non-spherical particles and the determination of the process function, the work focused on the particle technological characterisation of the starting, intermediate and end products and the development of methods to determine the degree of compaction.
During his research as PhD-Student Dr.-Ing. Markus Buchmann was engaged in the multidimensional characterisation of material mixtures in the field of minerals processing. In his groundbreaking work, the extensive and complex database provided by modern imaging techniques has been extrapolated to a homogeneous multidimensional distribution function of properties using statistical tools. The comparison of feed and product flow, which is common in separation processes, thus allowed the determination of a multi-dimensional separation function, with which separation processes can not only be described by means of one property (e.g. classification according to size or sorting according to e.g. density), but intentional or unintentional superpositions of several separation characteristics can be made visible. The work was developed at TU Bergakademie Freiberg in cooperation with the Helmholtz Institute Freiberg for Resource Technology.
