The tool: Catalysis

Jun 20, 2007 08:00 AM

More than 90% of petrochemical and fuel processes rely on catalysis. Catalysis thus appears as the main key towards developing more cost-efficient and environmentally-friendly processes.

A most fascinating aspect of heterogeneous catalysts is their unique ability to make reactions run at milder conditions with higher efficiency than otherwise feasible. This stems from delicate interactions between reactive gas or liquid molecules and one or more inorganic phases, frequently of nanometer sized dimensions, on a particular support that may contribute in a complex way to the reaction affinity.

While catalysis is a well-established industrial field, rapid development in instrumentation and computing power allows today a far deeper insight into the atomistic interactions taking place at catalyst-reactant interfaces than was possible only 10-15 years ago. Still, each available technique is only capable of presenting one fragment of the picture, and “bridging the gap” between fundamental insight obtained by advanced instrumentation at ambient or vacuum conditions and real catalysis under real process conditions is currently a major challenge of the catalysis research society. This is exactly why fundamental and applied catalysis is linked together in inGAP.