Catalysts for a green industry

The chemical industry has always exploited catalysts to do reactions as near to ambient temperature as is practical, thus keeping energy usage and costs down. Today industry faces additional pressure to be cleaner and greener, which will require the development of new catalysts.

The focus of catalyst research is now on finding catalysts that will enable industrial processes to be less polluting, operate with better atom economy, produce purer products and last longer. Although we may think of the catalyst as lasting for ever, this is never the case - all industrial catalysts have a finite lifetime, which makes the search for longer lasting catalysts high on industry's list of priorities.