4th Summer School on Catalysts Preparation

The preparation of heterogeneous catalysts is a major challenge for both academia and industry for the development of more active and selective formulations. However, despite numerous recent conceptual developments, the elaboration of catalysts relies too often on a trial and error strategy while the rational design of heterogeneous catalysts remains still a distant goal both at the laboratory and industrial scales. This difficulty may be explained in part by the need to address this area through a multidisciplinary approach combining chemistry and physical chemistry of surfaces, inorganic chemistry, colloid chemistry, materials chemistry (metal oxides, porous materials...), molecular spectroscopy and, last but not least, chemical engineering for the more applied aspects of shaping and up-scaling. The CatPrep summer school, open to the European scientific community, wishes to provide a general framework for teaching the fundamental and applied concepts of catalyst preparation. It will give a comprehensive overview of the fundamental knowledge required for the controlled elaboration of heterogeneous catalytic materials and will present the industrial requirements for large-scale synthesis. The main objective is to provide a common conceptual framework to the scientific community working in the field or at the periphery of heterogeneous catalysts preparation in order to: 1) Enable junior researchers to have a more rational view of the area in which they perform their research 2) Facilitate interactions between researchers by use of a common language and common concepts 3) Promote the dialogue between academia and industry in a highly specialized scientific area often protected by patents.