Catalysts and Specialty Chemicals

Catalysis, as it is applied to the industrial production of materials, is both broad and complex. It has significant implications on process costs and product properties, thereby affecting the competitiveness of the company that owns or operates the catalytic technology (via intellectual property). Catalysis affects R&D, technology and process development, process licensing, process engineering and construction (E&C), as well as product development, manufacture and supply. It serves numerous and diverse industries including petroleum, chemical, polymers, fine chemicals, pharma\agrochemicals, and environmental. To all this, "catalysis" is responsible for the efficient, low cost manufacture of products as diverse to each other as gasoline is to aspirin. A foundation so deep that we can state that "most of the global economy and societal gains over the last 100 years would not have been possible without it."

Catalysis is responsible in the manufacture of well over $3 trillion in goods and services of global GDP annually. Royalties and fees from technology process licensing in chemicals, polymers, and refining exceed $3.5 BIL annually and just catalysts sold in the merchant market exceeded $9 BIL/yr last year.

The figure below presents the size of the worldwide catalyst markets and expectations for growth through the year 2005, by general industry segment. Worthy of note are the particularly high expectations for growth in the polymers and environmental industries.

There are a number of critical emerging catalytic scientific platforms, many of which may be expected to have inter-industry impacts as the science can be manipulated or applied to vastly different products:

• Combinatorial Catalysis: discovery and optimization
• Single-site catalysis
• Selective oxidation catalysis
• Asymmetric (chiral) synthesis
• Molecular engineering and modeling
• Global catalytic information systems, e.g., reaction databases
• Biocatalysis and biomimics
• Alternative feedstock processes - biomass, alkane, CO2
• Enantiomeric amplification, rate enhancement

For developments in these and across all catalyst technologies, The Catalyst Group offers a variety of services to its clients:

• Strategic Technology Consulting
• Multi-Client Studies
• Membership Programs
• Conferences
• Publications
• In the News
• Key People