Prof.dr.ing. M.B. Franke | People Pages: Find employees & contact details

I studied Chemical Engineering from 1996 to 2001 at the Technical University (TU) Dortmund in Germany and obtained my PhD at the Laboratory of Fluid Separations of Professor Andrzej Górak at the same university.

I worked for over 15 years at Bayer and LANXESS in Germany and China in various positions. During this time, I was involved in process development and investment projects for isocyanate production units as process engineer and project manager. I was responsible as technical plant manager for the maintenance and investments projects of an amine phosgenation unit and as global technology manager for the process improvement of an agrochemical activate ingredient. In my last assignment at Bayer, I was heading the Process Modeling and Design group, which is part of the digital transformation activities providing the Digital Twins for the productions plants of Bayer.

I have been appointed in January 2021 as professor for Process Design and Optimization at the Sustainable Process Technology (SPT) Group at the Faculty of Science and Technology (TNW). My research interest is in the area of advanced process design and optimization including mixed-integer optimization, process optimization under uncertainties, and scheduling of chemical batch plants.

Expertise

Chemical Engineering
- Extraction
- Dewatering
- Membrane Reactor
Engineering
- Optimization
- Distillation
- Models
- Discrete Event Simulation
- Hybrid

Organisations

Publications

2025

Modified Benders-DES algorithm for real-world flow shop and job shop scheduling problems (2025)Computers & chemical engineering, 202. Article 109221. Wallrath, R., Zondervan, E. & Franke, M. B.https://doi.org/10.1016/j.compchemeng.2025.109221Intrinsic continuous process safeguarding (2025)[Thesis › PhD Thesis - Research external, graduation UT]. University of Twente. van 't Land, K.https://doi.org/10.3990/1.9789036564441Ferrofluidic countercurrent slug flow liquid-liquid extraction in millichannels (2025)Chemical Engineering Journal, 520. Article 166020. Niawanti, H., Elhami, V., Vermeeren, F., Hengeveld, B., Kienhuis, S., Franke, M. B., Wood, J. A. & Schuur, B.https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cej.2025.166020Homogeneous reactive distillation: The influence of pressure drop on separation and reaction kinetics (2025)Separation and purification technology, 357(Part A). Article 130108. Slager, N. & Franke, M. B.https://doi.org/10.1016/j.seppur.2024.130108Improved linear programming relaxations for flow shop problems with makespan minimization (2025)Computers & operations research, 177. Article 106970. Wallrath, R., Franke, M. & Walter, M.https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cor.2024.106970Integration of modeling and solution approaches for flow shop scheduling in the chemical industry (2025)[Thesis › PhD Thesis - Research UT, graduation UT]. University of Twente. Wallrath, R.https://doi.org/10.3990/1.9789036565004

2024

Dissociation extraction: Theoretical foundations and applications (2024)Separation and purification technology, 350. Article 127888. Franke, M. B. & Schuur, B.https://doi.org/10.1016/j.seppur.2024.127888Integration of MILP and discrete-event simulation for flow shop scheduling using Benders cuts (2024)Computers & chemical engineering, 189. Article 108809. Wallrath, R. & Franke, M. B.https://doi.org/10.1016/j.compchemeng.2024.108809Regeneration of deep eutectic solvent post biomass delignification (2024)[Thesis › PhD Thesis - Research UT, graduation UT]. University of Twente. Gholami, M.https://doi.org/10.3990/1.9789036562973Integrating MILP, Discrete-Event Simulation, and Data-Driven Models for Distributed Flow Shop Scheduling Using Benders Cuts (2024)Processes, 12(8). Article 1772. Wallrath, R. & Franke, M. B.https://doi.org/10.3390/pr12081772

Research profiles

Courses academic year 2025/2026

Courses in the current academic year are added at the moment they are finalised in the Osiris system. Therefore it is possible that the list is not yet complete for the whole academic year.

Courses academic year 2024/2025

Address

University of Twente

Horst Complex (building no. 20), room ME223
De Horst 2
7522 LW Enschede
Netherlands

Navigate to location