Page 4 - Packed bed columns for absorption, desorption, rectification and direct heat transfer

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About the author

Prof. Kolev is leading the laboratory of "Heat and mass transfer processes in
gas-liquid systems" at the Institute of Chemical Engineering of the Bulgarian
Academy of Sciences. He was born in 1933. In 1957 he graduated from the Uni-
versity of Chemical Technology and Metallurgy in Sofia. For two years he
worked as shift engineer in a plant for ammonia production. From 1959 to 1962 he
was an assistant professor at the Department of Chemical Engineering of the same
University. His Ph.D. thesis (1967) is about the influence of surface-active
agents on hydrodynamics and mass-transfer in packed bed columns. His D.Sc.
thesis (1980) is "About some basic problems of chemical engineering in creation
of highly effective packed bed columns". In 1970 he became an associate professor.
Since 1982 he has been a full professor. From 1967 to 1969 he specialized at Prof.
Brauer's institute at the Technical University-Berlin, funded by the Foundation
Alexander von Humboldt.
He has published about 128 papers and has 51 patented inventions, most of
them in the area of packed bed columns. On the basis of his patented inventions
about uniform liquid phase distribution over the whole cross-section of the
apparatus, and by using his own mathematical model, he succeeded to introduce
in industry new own packings and new processes without any pilot plant
investigations for a given system.
His team has developed 18 types of installations for different processes, such
as absorption, desorption, rectification and direct heating. The whole number of
his apparatuses, operating in chemical industry, food industry, power stations, and
environment protection, is over 750.