``A few weeks after my arrival here in The Netherlands all establishments were closed due to the Corona crisis, including Avans. In this new situation, my supervisor and I had to adapt our approach to pursuing the objective of our project. Fortunately in this project besides laboratory work, we use the simulation software Aspen Plus and this was our main asset for keeping the project schedule on time even without access to the labs. The Cashing Cashew project aims to obtain the compound Cardanol in a high purity from the oil that is extracted from Cashew Nut Shells through pyrolysis.
During the Corona crisis, I had weekly meetings with Qian Zhou, my supervisor, and another colleague in the project, Mithyzi. In these meetings, we shared the diverse theoretical backgrounds
related to the project theme and discussed the simulations that we were working on. For me, I can say that even working from home I had the opportunity to build a theoretical base for my
research. I was able to work with simulations to predict various proces scenarios and calculate the thermodynamic properties of the compound Cardanol since they are not available in literature.
After almost three intense months of quarantine, we are slowly getting back to our laboratory work, I am now able to confirm if the simulations that I did are right or wrong during the
experimental part of the project.``
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