Prof. dr. ir. Steven De Meester is assistant professor within the Department of Industrial Biological Sciences of the  Faculty  of  Bioscience  Engineering  of  Ghent  University.  His  educational  tasks  involve courses such as waste treatment, environmental  management and  chemical  engineering.  With  a  background  on  chemical engineering and sustainability assessment his research topic is the sustainable design of chemical  production chains  with  a  focus  on  purification  of  components  out  of  complex  streams  such  as  waste  biomass and waste plastics.  More concretely, the complex resource stream is analysed and then linked to an application after which a purification chain ‘fit-for-purpose’ is developed and optimized towards economic and environmental performance. For this purpose, unit operations such as (different types of) distillation, adsorption, extraction, selective flotation, etc. are used. Based on lab experiments and models (e.g. in ASPEN), the process chains are designed up to pilot scale. Prof. De Meester has extensive experience in working in different types of multidisciplinary projects, preferably in combination with industry.

Prof. De Meester chairs the Plastics to Resource pipeline within CAPTURE.