After three meetings in Poitiers, France, the 4th International Symposium on Heterogeneous Catalysis and Fine Chemicals was held under the auspices of the New Swiss Chemical Society in Basel, Switzerland. Fundamental as well as applied contributions on the use of heterogeneous catalysis for the preparation of fine chemicals were presented and discussed.The program consisted of 4 plenary lectures, 28 oral contributions and around 90 posters covering a broad range of reactions and catalytic aspects. 82 of these contributions are collected in the present proceedings, grouped into the following 8 topical areas:- Industrial and engineering problems (7 contributions)- Alkylation and acylation reactions (11 contributions)- Enantio- and diastereoselective hydrogenation reactions (9 contributions)- Chemoselective hydrogenation reactions (12 contributions)- Oxidation reactions (14 contributions)- Immobilized and encapsulated complex catalysts (12 contributions)- Zeolite and clay catalysts (12 contributions)- Miscellaneous topics (5 contributions)

The science of catalytic reaction engineering studies the catalyst and the catalytic process in the laboratory in order to predict how they will perform in production-scale reactors. Surprises are to be avoided in the scaleup of industrial processes. The laboratory results must account for flow, heat and mass transfer influences on reaction rate to be useful for scaleup. Calculated performance based on these results must also be useful to maximization of profit and safety and minimization of pollution. To this end, information on products as well as byproducts and heat produced must be generated. If a sufficiently large database of knowledge is produced, optimization studies will be possible later if economic conditions change.The field of reaction engineering required new tools. For kinetic and catalyst testing, the most successful of these tools was the internal recycle reactor. Studies in recycle reactors can be made under well-defined conditions of flow and associated transfer processes, and close to commercial operation. The recycle reactor eliminates or minimizes the effect of transfer process, and allows the remaining ones to be known.Features of this book:• Provides insight into a field that is neither well understood nor properly appreciated.• Gives a deeper understanding of reaction engineering practice.• Helps avoid frustration and disappointment in industrial research. This book is short and clear enough to assist all members of the R&D and Engineering team, whether reaction engineers, or specialists in other fields. This is critical in this new age of computation and communication, when team members must each know at least something of their colleagues' fields. Additionally, many scientists in more exploratory or fundamental fields can use recycle reactors to study basic phenomena free of transfer interactions.

Since 1987, the Petroleum Division of the American Chemical Society (ACS) has sponsored at 3 year intervals an international symposium on fluid cracking catalysts (FCC) technology. This volume collects the recent progress of this technology as reported in the papers presented during the 232th National Meeting of the ACS in San Francisco, September 10-14, 2006.Sixty-six years after the introduction of the fluid cracking catalyst process, it remains the main process of gasoline generation for the estimated 237 millions cars on US roads. Catalysts testing and evaluation still remains a subject of interest, debate and controversy. Lambda sweep testing, testing of SOx, NOx and combustion promoters have been discussed in details together with catalyst evaluation for atmospheric residues and metal contaminated oils cracking.Of particular interest has been the introduction of novel concept in process design aimed at improving cracked product selectivity such as two-stage risers for better gasoline and olefins production and downer technology for high severity processes . The importance of solid state nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) in the study of crude oils, catalysts and reaction products are illustrated by several examples. Two contributions describe the use of predictive methods to understand FCC aging and deactivationand personal overviews of the development of SOx and combustion promoters technology are presented.* Presents findings from the tri-annual international symposium on fluid cracking catalysts (FCC) technology, sponsored by the Petroleum Division of the American Chemical Society (ACS) * Two contributions describe the use of predictive methods to understand FCC aging and deactivation* Personal overviews by the authors of the development of SOx and combustion promoters technology

The dramatic evolution of catalytic converters in the last thirty years was a result of a need worldwide to reduce pollution created by the exhaust gases of internal combustion engines. Environmental concerns have led American, Japanese and European Union (EU) legislation to pose continuously stricter emission limits for petrol engines in the last decades. The catalytic converter has become the most important means of exhaust treatment to achieve the desired emission limits. The international legislation has also created a need for a regular assessment of the efficiency of the catalytic converter in order to detect a deterioration of its conversion efficiency as soon as this deterioration takes place. The assessment of conversion efficiency of a catalytic converter can take place during normal driving of a vehicle (on-board diagnosis or OBD) or in a workshop by specialized technicians. The most important methods nowadays are the OBD methods. The evolution of methods concerned with OBD and non-OBD monitoring and diagnosing of efficiency of catalytic converters of internal combustion engines is described based on patents and published patent applications. Non-patent references are also used. The basic principles of modern catalytic converters are described in an extensive Introduction, where the importance of monitoring and diagnosing the efficiency of catalytic converters is demonstrated. The book is divided into four parts. The first part describes methods involving the use of oxygen or air/fuel exhaust gas sensors to determine the oxygen storage capacity of a catalytic converter. The second part describes methods involving the use of temperature sensors to determine the exothermic reaction capacity of a catalytic converter. The third part describes all other methods existing in patent literature that monitor and diagnose the efficiency of catalytic converters. The great majority of the methods of the third part involves exhaust gas concentration measurements. The fourth part comprises a general discussion of all methods described. In the beginning of each part, a short introduction is given to explain the problem that the methods attempt to solve. The methods in each part are presented in chronological order per patent applicant. This helps to evaluate how the patent applicant has improved his methods over time. A patent number index with information about the patent applicants, inventors, priorities and patent-families, an inventor index, a company index and a subject index can be found at the end of the book.

This book offers an overview of the state of the art in the field of DeNOx catalysis in order to focus novel orientations, new technological developments, from laboratory to industrial scale. A particular attention has been paid towards the implementation of catalytic processes for minimising NOx emissions either from stationary or mobile sources under lean condition to meet future standard regulations of NOx emissions. In the first part of this book, critical aspects reported in the literature which usually make difficult the achievement of efficient catalytic technologies in those conditions are summarised and analysed in order two separate new perspectives. The second part deals with fundamental aspects at molecular level. A better understanding of the reactions involved under unsteady-state conditions is probably a pre-requisite step for improving the performances of the actual processes or developing original ones. The development of powerful in situ spectroscopic techniques is of fundamental interest for kinetic modelling. Correlations between spectroscopic and kinetic data with those obtained from theoretical calculations are reported. Some illustrations emphasise the fact that these comparisons may help in determining the nature of the catalytic active sites and building predictive tools for simulations under running conditions. The latter part of this book will be illustrated by different practical approaches covering various aspects related to the catalysts preparation and the development of alternative technologies which include industrial considerations.- New technological developments for investigating catalytic reactions in transient conditions (in situ and operando spectroscopic techniques)- Concerted approaches in DeNOx catalysis - How academic aspects (kinetic, in situ spectroscopic measurements) can provide useful information for practical applications- Comparison of different approaches provided by academic and industrial partners

Biocatalysis in Oil Refining focuses on petroleum refining bioprocesses, establishing a connection between science and technology.The micro organisms and biomolecules examined for biocatalytic purposes for oil refining processes are thoroughly detailed. Terminology used by biologists, chemists and engineers is brought into a common language, aiding the understanding of complex biological-chemical-engineering issues. Problems to be addressed by the future R&D activities and by new technologies are described and summarized in the last chapter. * Updated references * Studying bioprocessing problems, looking at opportunities for improvements and technology developments