Thrust 3: Chemical Catalyst Design

Catalytic reactions are typically controlled by chemical processes that take place at various length scales. Moreover, complex couplings can take place between these processes, leading to potentially synergistic effects. Accordingly, an understanding of such couplings is essential for “catalytic reaction synthesis,” which is the identification, development, and optimization of catalytic reactions for new applications, especially those applications that are not simple variations of known catalytic reactions, such as developing new catalytic reactions for production of chemicals and fuels from renewable biomass resources. Important couplings in catalytic reaction synthesis for biomass conversion are expected to be: (1) functional coupling at the active site level; (2) kinetic coupling between active sites in the same reactor; (3) chemical coupling between surface reactions and homogeneous reactions for liquid-phase processes; and (4) thermodynamic and transport coupling between multiple phases (e.g., gas, aqueous, organic liquid, and solid catalyst phases) in complex reactors.