Energy and Chemicals

The issues facing companies in the energy and chemicals sectors are manifold and complex. There is a growing but understandable anxiety relating to energy resources not just in terms of quantity, but also in regards to who controls them. There is a move to diversify the sources of energy supply by mobilising non-conventional resources, accompanied by wide ranging investigation of how the chemical industry responds to the availability of alternative feedstocks with new materials value chains to create advantage over competitors with access to cheap conventional feeds. Added to these concerns and developments regarding raw material supply and conversion, is the ever growing worry about climate change and how it will affect us in years to come and tightening legislation relating to the impact of fuel and chemical products on the environment.

In many cases the key in addressing the above issues is investment in new and/or improved process technology, which inevitably means innovation and catalysis. Thus the opportunities in catalysis are large - in monetary terms for process improvements or new process options, and also in environmental terms, for cleaner or more 'green' chemical processes and improved environmental catalysts or purification agents.

In order to increase chances of breakthrough catalyst/process discoveries, the scope of experimental search has to be broadened but without a corresponding increase in cost or development time. In fact, the long development times for new catalytic process technology need to be reduced.

The key is increased productivity through the use of laboratory workflow automation. We have created integrated R&D workflow solutions for high throughput experimentation, which combine automated materials preparation, parallel reactor systems for accelerated catalyst/process studies and powerful process control and informatics software.

hte is a leading provider of workflow solutions that enhance R&D productivity and promote innovation in all four key categories of catalytic process research: refinery, chemical, environmental and polymer. Moreover, as a renowned centre of excellence in the field of catalysis and process R&D, hte undertakes R&D collaborations with several leading energy and chemicals clients, in which our research staff execute programs using high throughput technologies at our laboratory facilities in Heidelberg.