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Abstract: Zeolites established themselves in the last 70 years as a very important class of catalysts for various petrochemical and chemical transformations [1,2]. Out of around 230 zeolite structures known today, less than 10 are used as industrial catalysts and more than 20000 other structures are known in-vitro. Both in industry and academia a great effort was devoted in designing and synthetically producing new zeolite framework topologies or developing synthesis methods to enable synthesis of known structures for their use in catalysis. New concepts for direct synthesis or post synthetic approaches [3,4,5] were successfully developed and applied industrially. In addition, structure – performance relationships are becoming more and more important for their use as catalysts in chemical industry. Design and control of active site structure environment enable access to materials with improved catalytic performance. In this lecture I will address some of those synthetic concepts and give some examples on the application of these materials in catalysis and how they could support in development of a more sustainable chemical industry.

Biography: Dr. Andrei Parvulescu studied chemistry at the University of Bucharest and received his Master degree at the same university in 2005 in Catalysis and Catalytic Processes. After obtaining his PhD  degree from Leuven University in 2008 under the supervision of Prof. Pierre Jacobs and Prof. Dirk De Vos, he has worked as a postdoctoral fellow with Prof. Bert Weckhuysen at the Utrecht University. In 2011 he joined the BASF SE, in the Process Research & Chemical Engineering department working on zeolite research catalysis. Within BASF, Dr Parvulescu worked on numerous R&D projects focused on development and application of zeolites as process chemical catalysts from new concept evaluations to scale-up and implementation in commercial processes. His current position is as Global Technology Manager with the BASF Monomers Division. Dr. Parvulescu authored or co-authored 45 publications in peer-reviewed scientific journals and is co-inventor on 125 patent and patent applications. Since 2019 he is an elected member of the Advisory Board of the German Zeolite Association of Dechema.

References:

[1] – B. Yilmaz, U. Müller, Top Catal., 2009, 52, 888-895;

2] – S.I. Zones, Microporous Mesoporous Mater., 2011, 144, 1-8

[3] – G. Majano, L. Borchardt, S. Mitchell, V. Valtchev, J. Pérez- Ramírez, Microporous Mesoporous Mater., 2014,194, 106 ;

[4] - K. Iyoki, K. Itabashi, T. Okubo, Microporous Mesoporous Mater., 2014, 189, 22 -30 ; X. Meng, F.-S. Xiao, Cehm. Rev., 2014, 114, 1521 – 1543.

[5] – P. Eliášová, M. Opanasenko, P.S. Wheatley, M. Shamzhy, M. Mazur, P. Nachtigall, W.J. Roth, R.E. Morris , J. Čejka, Chem. Soc. Rev., 2014, 44, 7177- 7206.