Chemicals Industry Catalysis Workshop Report
The workshop report can be found at the Technology Vision 2020: The U.S. Chemical Industry Web site. (In the fourth paragraph of the index page, click on "copies of completed roadmaps". The workshop report is the second to the last report.)
The economic value of catalysis goes beyond the value of catalysts as products and encompasses the reaction chemistry that catalysts enable for a variety of products, e.g. chemicals, petroleum products, automobiles, pharmaceuticals, rubber and plastics, and many others.
About 90% of chemical manufacturing processes and more than 20% of all industrial products in the U.S. employ underlying catalytic steps. For example, catalysis plays a substantial role in the production of 30 of the top 50 U.S. commodity chemicals. Of the 20 non-catalystically produced chemicals, six are made from raw materials that are produced catalytically. The energy use component in the production of the top 50 chemicals is significant: 5 quads per year for the top 50 chemicals; 3 quads per year for catalytic production routes. It has been estimated that if all the catalytic processes associated with the top 50 chemicals were raised to their maximum process yields, total energy savings would exceed 0.47 quads per year. Even a more realistic process yield improvement of 10% would save 0.23 quads per year.
Of the estimated 1.45 billion metric tons of carbon emissions in the U.S. in 1996, the industrial sector ranks third, accounting for 21% (electric utilities - 36%; transportation - 33%) including 3% by the chemical industry. For the top 50 chemicals, the latter figure exceeds 20.9 billion pounds CO2, produced either directory or via unwanted carbonaceous byproducts that are later incinerated or biologically converted. Therefore, the key to both energy savings and CO2 emissions reductions will be the successful integration of catalytic science and process engineering research to achieve real gains in process efficiency.
A workshop was held to identify the priorities for catalysis and the results are documented in the Catalysis Workshop Report. The achievement of two principal goals highlighted in the report is sought:
- Acceleration of the catalyst discovery process
- Development of catalysts with selectivity approaching 100%
The identified applications and enabling science are focused on lowering energy requirements via higher selectivity, more moderate temperature and pressure, and a reduced number of unit operations, all of which impact overall resource efficiency.