Alejandra Lenis und Carl Fritsch are appointed head of departments: Wastewater Technology and Energy Technology & Sector Coupling

Mr Carl Fritsch will take over the head of the newly created Energy Technology & Sector Coupling department on 1 April 2025, while Ms Alejandra Lenis will take over the Wastewater Technology department on 1 July 2025. Ms Lenis and Mr Fritsch will thus continue the Environmental Process & Energy Technology division successfully established by Dr Kristoffer Ooms. We congratulate Ms Lenis and Mr Fritsch on their new positions and wish them and their teams further success. We would like to thank Mr Ooms for almost 15 years of pioneering research and consultancy at FiW - he will return to his home Ruhr region and take up a new position in strategic energy management at our member Emschergenossenschaft and Lippeverband.

With the continuation in two independent departments, Wastewater Technology (AWT) and Energy Technology & Sector Coupling (ETS), we at FiW are pursuing the goal of further expanding our wastewater, sewer, energy, biogas, power-to-X and heat projects and opening up prospects for new innovations and services.

Alejandra Lenis studied chemical engineering at KIT in Karlsruhe. She has been a researcher at FiW since 2016 and has been working on her doctorate on microbiological biogas desulphurisation under anoxic conditions since 2019. Her focus is on experimental research and the development of new processes. The operation of semi-technical demonstration plants for the use of membrane bioreactors in municipal sewage treatment plants, methanol synthesis from biogas and microbiological biogas desulphurisation are some of her topics. Ms Lenis has managed the conception, development and acquisition of projects to transfer new technologies from theory to application. She has also specialised in the scientific evaluation and consultant services of process developments for both private and public sector companies.

Carl Fritsch studied industrial engineering at RWTH Aachen University, specialising in mechanical engineering (B.Sc.) and energy technology and operations management (M.Sc.). He has been working at FiW e. V. since 2019. He has worked on and managed projects in the areas of electrolysis application in the water sector, biogas technologies, power-to-X CCU and heat generation. Since 2020, Mr Fritsch has been significantly involved in the thematic design, acquisition and implementation of most Power-to-X projects in the former division of Environmental Process and Energy Technology. He has specialised in particular in the material and energy use of biomass and biogas. He is also involved in several projects on the digitalisation and modelling of energy supply infrastructures. Mr Fritsch is pursuing his doctorate in the field of technical chemistry on the production of methanol from CO₂ or biogas.

We look forward to continuing cooperation in our research and consultancy projects.