Citizen of Germany Accepted on the recommendation of

First and foremost, I want to express my gratitude to Prof. Marco Mazzotti for accepting me as a Ph.D. student in his group, for the continuous support and the fruitful discussions, and the possibility to develop and pursue my own ideas. I would also like to thank Prof. Massimo Morbidelli and Prof. Richard Braatz for accepting the task of co-examiner of this thesis. The financial support of Novartis Pharma AG is gratefully acknowledged. A special thanks to Dr. Jörg Brozio for his scientific and industrial relevant input. I am indebted to all friends and colleagues in the Separation Processes Labora-tory, especially to Markus Huber for his help in the lab, to Christian Rohrbach for designing and mounting the experimental setup, to Dr. Lars Vicum, Dr. Jochen Schöll and Jeroen Cornel for their advice and help. I also want to thank Lorenzo Codan and Martin Krättli for their commitment and good results during their semester and master theses. Great thanks to all colleagues for their friendship and for making my stay in Zurich even more pleasant