Global Challenges in Chemicals and Energies - Standardization and Acceleration of Catalysis R & D

Global challenges in chemicals and energies comprise:

• Increasing constraints in supply from fossils and recently nuclear power.

• Increasing constraints by regulations (CO2 emission, global warming, …).

• Increasing demand e.g. spurred by the dynamic growths in the BRICS countries.

• By 2020 China is projected to consume more than 50% of the global energy.

Corresponding R+D organizations need to cope with the challenges typically with the same amount of resources. The only way out of this “catch 22” is to standardize and accelerate materials R+D via enabling, automated solutions for e.g.:

• Catalyst preparation by incipient wetness impregnation, excessive liquid impregnation, (co-)precipitation (mixed oxides), hydrothermal treatment (zeolites) and screening in e.g. hydrogenation, alkylation, isomerization, oxidation, cracking.

• Ligand and organometallic catalyst synthesis and screening for e.g. polyolefins, rubbers, fine and specialty chemicals.

• Catalyst testing / optimization in batch, semi-continuous, continuous mode.

• Alternative energy solutions (e.g. solar cell, battery, storage, fuel cell materials).

• Renewable chemicals (e.g. from biomass, CO2).

Case studies and platform approaches from different research groups (section 9.1 to 9.5) on fuel cell, biorefinery, fine and specialty chemicals, basic chemicals, exhaust gas and syn gas catalysis provide examples about benefits, implementation scenarios, and stateof- the-art research platforms / approaches in catalysis R+D. The contributions of the different research groups are presented in correspondingly autonomous sections.

Keywords: Catalysis, hybrid catalysis, energy-related catalysis, catalysts, synthesis, preparation, screening, testing, formulation, electrochemistry, high throughput, high output, automated, parallel experimentation, reproducibility, scalability, standardization, downscaling, upscaling, reaction optimization, gas phase, liquid phase, hydrogenation, methanol synthesis, biorefinery, biotechnology, zeolites, vitamins, fine chemicals, specialty chemicals, basic chemicals, petrochemicals, polymers, materials, biomass, PEM fuel cell, liquid catholyte, polyoxometalate, exhaust gas, synthesis gas, characterization, parallel characterization, structureperformance relationships, computational screening, scaling relations, X-ray absorption spectroscopy, infrared spectroscopy, in situ spectroscopy.