(*Former) Promotor Circular Economy Policy Research Centre
"Creating both environmental benefit and economic potential (for Europe), I don’t see why anyone would be against the circular economy."
Prof. dr. ir. Steven De Meester is assistant professor since 2016 within the Department of Green Chemistry and Technology of the Faculty of Bioscience Engineering of Ghent University.
After studying bioscience engineering, he worked within the research group EnVOC as sustainability advisor on the FISCH feasibility study together with essenscia (Flanders), worked on the EFRO project eco2chem and has obtained his PhD whilst performing research within the FP7 project PROSUITE (Prospective Sustainability Assessment of Technologies).
He was also active in OWS NV as Project manager and in the Capture initiative, which is a cluster of research groups and industry focusing on interdisciplinary research, innovation and valorisation in the area of resource recovery. His current educational tasks involve different (parts of) courses such as waste treatment, chemical engineering, thermal operations, environmental management systems and environmental impact assessment.
`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 plastics. More concretely, the complex resource stream is analyzed and then linked to an application after which a purification chain ‘fit-for-purpose’ is developed, upscaled and optimized towards economic and environmental performance.