Supported Catalysts

Catalysts are essential essential for our society: our bodies and nature would not function without, but also they are key to provide our society with fuels, plastics, drugs, and they are essential to allow the transition from fossil to renewable building blocks. In our group we investigate the most common catalysts: solid (or “heterogenous”) catalyst, which often consist of supported metal nanoparticles.

To optimise the use of often expensive metals, the active phase are typically metal nanoparticles smaller than 10 nm. These active particles are stabilised on porous/high surface area supports, which in turn can be shaped in pellets of extrudates with much larger sizes as generally they have to be thermally mechanically and chemically stable during operation at elevated temperatures and pressures in reactors that are up to several meters or even tens of meters in size.

We we aim to answer fundamental questions related to:

• Fundamentals of catalyst preparation
• Catalyst stability
• Particle size effects
• Impact of metal spatial distribution
• Support effects
• Promoters

For very relevant conversions:

• CO₂ to fuels and chemicals
• Ammonia synthesis and decomposition
• Methanol synthesis
• Fischer Tropsch (/clean synthetic fuels)
• Selective oxidation (ethylene and propylene epoxidation, CO PROX, liquid phase oxidation)
• Selective hydrogenation (gas phase and liquid phase)
• Ester hydrogenation