Process Engineers Use New Catalysts to Solve Old Problems

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Prying Open the Black Box

Despite the fact that basic research is much further advanced than in the days of Haber-Bosch, to a certain extent, catalysis remains a black box. What exactly goes on inside a reactor sometimes looks more like alchemy even to experienced process engineers. As a result, a rational approach to the development of new catalytic technology is becoming more important than ever. There is good reason why Bayer Technology Services has been migrating from high-throughput screening to rational catalyst development in recent years.

Mleczko: “In order to develop new catalysts, we try to understand how a catalyst works. We began using a rational approach several years ago which is based on mathematical modeling and simulation rather than high-throughput screening to speed up the development process. We use a full set of analytical, mathematical methodologies to support rational catalyst development.” Catalyst development and reactor development proceed hand in hand right from the outset.

Mleczko’s team handles all customer queries, and it has plenty of work to do at the moment. Optimization is one major area of activity, but “large development projects are the dominating factor at the moment, for both internal and external customers”.

Just recently, a report appeared in the Wall Street Journal about a project which Bayer Technology Services has been working on for the American company LP Amina. The process details are being kept under wraps, but information released by LP Amina seems to indicate that the basic idea is to produce monomers and energy from coal.

The new process reflects the main driving forces in the market, namely climate change, energy and raw material efficiency, CO₂ footprint, sustainability and the search for alternatives to oil, in other words coal, gas and biomass. These are all issues which feature prominently in the catalysis research roadmap which was published by Processnet and the German Catalysis Society in March 2010.

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