Researchers reveal atomic-scale details of catalysts’ active sites

New technique from the CNSI at UCLA may lead to design approaches that optimize the performance of chemical reactions

09-Aug-2024 - The chemical and energy industries depend upon catalysts to drive the reactions used to create their products. Many important reactions use heterogeneous catalysts — meaning that the catalysts are in a different phase of matter than the substances they are reacting with, such as solid platinum ...

Discovery of a new catalytic promoter on par with decades of study

Discovered in a few weeks and with fewer than 100 experiments

03-Jun-2024 - Addressing climate change demands rethinking of established chemical processes on a timescale of years rather than decades as in traditional R&D cycles. In collaboration with BasCat (UniCat BASF JointLab), a team of researchers from the Theory Department at the Fritz Haber Institute developed an ...

Unveiling how water and ions impact chemical reactivities at solid-aqueous interfaces

16-Sep-2022 - Solid-aqueous interfaces are ubiquitous and essential in a diverse range of natural and man-made systems and processes, from mineral formation, rock weathering, metal corrosion, to the intricate functioning of biological membranes and ion channels. In all these systems and processes, water and ...

Direct conversion of carbon dioxide into bulk chemicals and liquid fuels

30-Aug-2022 - High-efficiency utilization of CO2 facilitates the reduction of CO2 concentration in the global atmosphere and hence the alleviation of the greenhouse effect. The chemical utilization of CO2, which refers to converting CO2 into value-added chemicals and liquid fuels, has a distinct and direct CO2 ...

Improve industrial chemical reactions with better products and less byproducts

Heterogeneous photocatalysis can help scientists sustainably control products and byproducts of chemical reactions, including reducing CO₂

03-Jun-2022 - Controlling the products and byproducts of a chemical reaction is called selectivity. Scientists are trying to find better ways to control selectivity in industrial chemical reactions to improve the quality of the chemical products, reduce wasteful byproducts, and reduce harmful byproducts, like ...

Scientists create ultra-highly stable Cu-based catalysts

16-Dec-2021 - The development of Cu-based catalysts is limiteddue totheir poor thermal stabilitycaused bythe low Tammann temperature of Cu. Recently, a research group led by Prof. YU Jiafeng and Prof. SUN Jian from theDalian Institute of Chemical Physics(DICP) of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) ...

Catalyst transforms plastic waste to valuable ingredients at low temperature

07-Jan-2021 - For the first time, researchers have used a novel catalyst process to recycle a type of plastic found in everything from grocery bags and food packaging to toys and electronics into liquid fuels and wax. "Plastics are essential materials for our life because they bring safety and hygiene to our ...

Catalyst Research: Molecular Probes Require Highly Precise Calculations

Scientists Use Advanced Methods with Hybrid Functionals for Analysis of Active Sites

21-Dec-2020 - Catalysts are indispensable for many technologies. To further improve heterogeneous catalysts, it is required to analyze the complex processes on their surfaces, where the active sites are located. Scientists of Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT), together with colleagues from Spain and ...

A 40-year-old catalyst unveils its secrets

Findings will help catalyst research take an important step forward

30-Oct-2020 - “Titanium silicalite-1” (TS-1) is not a new catalyst: It has been almost 40 years since its development and the discovery of its ability to convert propylene into propylene oxide, an important basic chemical in the chemical industry. Now, by combining various methods, a team of scientists from ...

Taming defective porous materials for robust and selective heterogeneous catalysis

09-May-2019 - The production of 1-butene via ethylene dimerization is one of the few industrial processes that employs homogeneous catalysis due to their high selectivity--despite the massive amounts of activators and solvents required. Now, a new paper by the University of the Basque Country (UPV/EHU), in ...