Prof. Peter Wasserscheid takes over institute division

The founding phase of the Institute for Sustainable Hydrogen Economy (INW) at Forschungszentrum Jülich has been completed. Prof. Peter Wasserscheid took up the position of Director of the Institute Division Reaction Engineering for Chemical Hydrogen Storage (INW-3) on 1 May. This means that the four scientific divisions of the INW are now headed by renowned researchers.

“The INW has left the runway behind, successfully completed its climb and is now setting its sights on its important goals,” says Prof. Peter Jansens, who is responsible for energy on the Research Centre’s Executive Board. “We are very pleased that we were able to recruit Peter Wasserscheid, the founding director of the INW, for this very important area of research. INW-3 links surface and catalyst research with process and plant engineering at the Institute for Sustainable Hydrogen Economy.”

There from the start

Peter Wasserscheid has been with INW since the very beginning. With him as founding director and head of the Demonstration Projects Department (INW-D), the institute was launched at the end of 2021. Taking over the management of INW-3 now means a return to the focus of his scientific work: designing high-performance reactors for chemical hydrogen storage.

“This task is more exciting than ever. When hydrogen is bound to carrier molecules, heat is released and volume is reduced. The opposite happens when hydrogen is released. To make hydrogen storage powerful, cost-effective and efficient, the conversion devices must be optimally designed. They are the heart of chemical hydrogen storage. For example, the aim is to release as much hydrogen as possible from the reactor volume of a shoebox as quickly as possible. That’s what really excites me.”

Focus on strong cooperation within the institute

Peter Wasserscheid is particularly looking forward to the scientific collaboration with the other departments at INW: “With Prof. Hans-Georg Steinrück at INW-1, Prof. Regina Palkovits at INW-2 and Prof. Andreas Peschel at INW-4, we now have a fantastic scientific management team at INW. Together, we are now gathering momentum to achieve our institute’s ambitious scientific and technological goals. We want to implement the best findings and solutions in order to make our contribution to structural change in the Rhineland mining region.”

Peter Wasserscheid, who was previously responsible for technology demonstration as head of INW-D, intends to remain closely involved in this area. “We are realigning INW-D and will focus in future on developing business models and application scenarios for innovative hydrogen technologies in the Rhineland region. The technological concepts will come from all scientific areas of INW and from other areas of Forschungszentrum Jülich. Of course, we also expect to continue receiving many highly interesting proposals for demonstrators from companies, municipalities, and academic institutions in the Rhineland region.”

Personal background

Peter Wasserscheid (born 1970) has been Chair of Chemical Reaction Engineering at Friedrich-Alexander University Erlangen-Nürnberg (FAU) since 2003 and Director at Forschungszentrum Jülich since 2013. There, he works at both the Helmholtz Institute Erlangen-Nürnberg for Renewable Energy (HI ERN) and, since 2021, at the Institute for Sustainable Hydrogen Economy (INW). He helped establish both institutions as their founding director. In 2025, he will move within the INW to take over as head of the Reaction Engineering for Chemical Hydrogen Storage (INW-3) division.

After studying chemistry at RWTH Aachen University, he obtained his doctorate in 1998 and then worked for six months as an industrial postdoctoral researcher at BP Chemicals in the United Kingdom. He subsequently qualified as a professor at RWTH Aachen University in the field of technical chemistry. His research focuses on the development of processes for emission-free energy supply in the future and more sustainable production of chemicals.

His group is one of the world’s leading teams in chemical hydrogen storage using LOHC (Liquid Organic Hydrogen Carrier) systems. His scientific work includes catalyst and reactor development, system design, demonstration plants and technology transfer.

Peter Wasserscheid has received numerous awards for his research, including the Leibniz Prize from the German Research Foundation (2006), two Advanced Grants from the European Research Council (2010, 2018) and twice the German Innovation Award in the ‘Start-up Company’ category (2003, 2016). He has contributed to over 550 scientific publications and is co-inventor of more than 120 patent families.

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