Within the framework of a joint exchange programme of the European Union and the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan, I visitied the country in May/June 1996 and in February 1997. My exchange partner was Riyadh A. Saymeh. He is an assistant professor at the Chemistry Department of Yarmouk University in Irbid in the north of the country.

At my first stay, Riyadh and I worked together on the gas phase reaction of toluene with hydrogene over several perovskite catalysts, since he and one of his master students had just finished up with a study of this reaction over metal-impreganted alumina catalysts. The results of this work have been published afterwards.

During the second stay we set up an infrared spectroscopic experiment to follow the catalytic reaction in-situ. The cell design came from Riyadh and has been realised by Atallah Shihadeh in the local workshop. We included the spectroscopic cell into a gas line to be able to simultaneously follow the reaction by gas chromatography.