©2000 - 2002 Dipl.-Ing. Tobias Jockenhövel. All rights reserved.

This work is supported by the following organizations:

The industrial partner for this research project is SIEMENS Power Generation (KWU). This research project is funded by a personal Ph.D. scholarship from the Ernst von SIEMENS-Foundation. I am very proud of this honor.

Thanks to the DAAD for the support of the research collaboration visit to Carnegie Mellon University in 2001 and for the short visit to Purdue University in 2000.

I would like to thank the following people for making this work possible:

Professor George Tsatsaronis for providing supervision and supporting me in many ways during the study and during the Ph.D. over the last couple of years.

Professor Lorenz T. Biegler for making the collaboration with his group possible, and for his enthusiasm, guidance and interest in this work and the support for the stay in 2002.

My research partners from SIEMENS Power Generation, in particular Dr. Gustav Löbel, Dr. Oldrich Zaviska and Frau Reichel for their interest in me and in my work and for supporting me in many ways.

This work wouldn’t be possible without the many students which wrote bachelor and diploma theses under my supervision: Yuen Yee Jin, Alan Yeo, Richard Faber, Steffen Petrauschke and Matthias zum Beck. Many thanks for their great and enthusiastic work.

Andreas Wächter for graciously sharing his IPOPT solver and for the many useful tips.

The staff of the Chemical Engineering Department of Carnegie Mellon University for making my stays pleasant and fruitful.

Jason Galanter for providing free web hosting and other support during challenging times. Jason is owner of WebCounter, vice president of Nettec Services and a dear friend and scuba diving buddy.