In research and teaching, the Chair of Thermodynamics deals with the simulation of innovative energy technology processes. In this context, simulation environments developed in-house on the basis of tools such as Matlab, Simulink, or simply MS Excel are predominantly used - usually, the focus is on an in-depth scientific understanding of new processes or process variants, not on the optimization of technical processes with commercially available tools.

Examples for the simulation of energy processes are investigations on the uncertainty of calculations for natural gas liquefaction, processes for the utilization of solar energy by reversible operation of heat pumps, the utilization of waste heat flows of combustion engines, the storage of heat at cryogenic temperatures as part of storage power plants, or the supply of process heat by a supercritical high-temperatur heatpump process [1-4]. The Chair of Thermodynamics has a unique selling point in the field of process simulation whenever it succeeds in incorporating competences from the field of highly accurate equations of state to calculate properties into work on the simulation of energy technology processes.