FOCUS ON

C A T A L Y S T S
A MONTHLY REPORT FROM
ALAN E COMYNS

AN INTERNATIONAL NEWSLETTER MONITORING TECHNICAL AND

COMMERCIAL DEVELOPMENTS IN THE MANUFACTURE AND
USE OF CATALYSTS ISSN 13514180

NOVEMBER 2014

MECHANOCHEMISTRY AND CATALYSIS

In this issue

MARKETS AND
BUSINESS

1-3

US funding for biofuels

French funding for biofuels
Palladium price at 13 year high

COMPANY NEWS

3-5

Univation now a Dow company

Kenrich has new catalysts for
plastics recycling
PQ ownership changes
Velocys has funding for biomassto-liquids project

NEW PLANTS

5-6

Cellulosic ethanol plant opened in

Iowa
Cellulosic ethanol plant for
Slovakia
Chinese light olefins plant now
operating

NEW TECHNOLOGY

6-7

Gas fermentation makes organics

using micro-organisms
Kao making fatty acids from algae

PATENTS

BOOKSHELF

EVENTS

There are many aspects to mechanochemistry and I will not attempt to

classify or summarise them here.
Mechanochemistry is the subject of
an extensive recent general review1,
published by the Royal Society of
Chemistry. It has 16 authors, from 13
institutions, and 822 references.
Heterogeneous catalysts are
discussed in four of its pages.
I will merely discuss those aspects
of mechanochemistry which are
relevant to catalyst manufacture. The
subject has come to prominence
recently, almost accidentally, because
of the invention of combinatorial
procedures for making libraries of
compounds and compositions. There
have been two driving forces behind
this work: identification of potential
new drugs, and identification of new
inorganic compositions for a variety of
applications, including
superconductivity and catalysis.
New compositions are made in
machines which generate libraries of
mixtures by grinding their components
together and then testing the products
in various ways. Unexpectedly, the
grinding processes alone can affect
the results. The leading company in
this work is Symyx Technologies in
Santa Clara, California, a spinout
from the Lawrence Berkeley National
Laboratory. Separately, Sd-Chemie,
a major catalyst manufacturer, has
patented a process for making
hydrotalcite catalysts by dry-grinding
the raw materials together.2
For decades, zeolite chemists have
known that the cations in zeolites can
be exchanged for other cations simply
by grinding the zeolites with the

relevant dry salts. It is unnecessary to

dissolve the salts in water and slurry
them with the zeolites, which has
been the usual commercial process.
This unexpected result has now been
well studied in the laboratory, notably
by HG Karge at the Fritz Haber
Institute in Berlin, although I am
unaware of any commercial
applications of it.
Building on this, zeolite chemists
have now subjected the intermediate
products in zeolite syntheses,
typically sols and gels, to mechanical
treatments and they have observed
important effects. One of the
objectives of such processes is to
minimise, or even eliminate, the need
for expensive organic templates in
synthesis. Recent progress has been
reviewed3 but, as usual,
commercialisation lags behind.
Alan Comyns
1) Hallmarks of mechanochemistry: from
nanoparticles to technology, Chemical Society
Reviews, 21 Sep 2013, 42(18), 7571-7637
2) US Patents 7,211,235 (1 May 2007); 7,897,136
(1 May 2011)
3) Rediscovering zeolite mechanochemistry a
pathway beyond current synthesis and modification
boundaries, Microporous and Mesoporous Materials,
Aug 2014,194, 106-114

MARKETS AND
BUSINESS
Boosting biomass for bioenergy
A total of $12.6 M was granted to ten
bioenergy- and biomass-related
projects, selected through the DOE-

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