Who we are?

 
The North Amer­i­can Catal­y­sis Soci­ety was found­ed in 1956 to pro­mote and encour­age the growth and devel­op­ment of the sci­ence of catal­y­sis and those sci­en­tif­ic dis­ci­plines ancil­lary there­to; to pro­vide edu­ca­tion­al ser­vices to mem­bers and oth­er inter­est­ed indi­vid­u­als; to orga­nize and par­tic­i­pate in pro­fes­sion­al meet­ings of sci­en­tists; to report, dis­cuss and exchange infor­ma­tion and view­points in the field of catal­y­sis; to serve as a cen­tral exchange for the sev­er­al catal­y­sis clubs con­cern­ing infor­ma­tion on their activ­i­ties; and to pro­vide liai­son with for­eign catal­y­sis soci­eties, with the Inter­na­tion­al Con­gress on Catal­y­sis, and with oth­er sci­en­tif­ic orga­ni­za­tions and indi­vid­u­als, no pecu­niary gain or prof­it to mem­bers, inci­den­tal or oth­er­wise, being contemplated.

What is Catalysis and what are Catalysts?

 
Catal­y­sis plays a key part in all our lives and is of vital impor­tance to our present-day stan­dard of liv­ing and qual­i­ty of life because of the many prod­ucts and ener­gy relat­ed activ­i­ties derived from its appli­ca­tion. Catal­y­sis is not an indus­try but a key tech­nol­o­gy used by many indus­tries. Catal­y­sis is a phe­nom­e­non by which a rel­a­tive­ly small amount of a sub­stance, called a cat­a­lyst, accel­er­ates the rate of a chem­i­cal reac­tion with­out itself being con­sumed. Cat­a­lysts rep­re­sent a major mate­ri­als indus­try. The 1989 U.S. cat­a­lyst mar­ket was $1.9 bil­lion [$5 bil­lion, world­wide]. In 1999, the cat­a­lyst mar­ket is approach­ing $3 bil­lion in sales. The finan­cial impact of catal­y­sis can be seen not only in the sale of cat­a­lysts (the mate­r­i­al) but also in the val­ue of the tech­nol­o­gy and the prod­ucts derived there­from. The total val­ue of fuels and chem­i­cals derived through catal­y­sis in the U.S. in 1989 is esti­mat­ed at $891 bil­lion! This rep­re­sents about 17% of the U.S. GNP. World­wide, the val­ue added from catal­y­sis is about $3 trillion.

One exam­ple of a cat­a­lyst is the use of a mixed oxide of alu­minum and sil­i­con for the crack­ing of crude oil to gaso­line. Cat­a­lysts not only enhance the rates of reac­tion, but they also direct reac­tants to spe­cif­ic prod­ucts and thus they find broad use in petro­le­um, chem­i­cal, ener­gy and envi­ron­men­tal indus­tries. They are not con­sumed by the reac­tions they aid; thus they func­tion indef­i­nite­ly unless degrad­ed by heat, con­t­a­m­i­nants, or oth­er fac­tors. Het­ero­ge­neous cat­a­lysts often come in the form of pow­ders, spheres, tablets, wires, and oth­er sol­id forms as well as a coat­ing. Auto­mo­tive exhaust cat­a­lysts are a typ­i­cal exam­ple of a het­ero­ge­neous cat­a­lyst com­posed of plat­inum, pal­la­di­um, and rhodi­um sup­port­ed on a thin oxide lay­er used for con­trol­ling car­bon monox­ide, hydro­car­bons, and NOx emis­sions. An exam­ple of a homo­ge­neous cat­a­lyst is the wide­spread use of a sol­u­ble rhodi­um com­plex for the syn­the­sis of over a bil­lion pounds per year of acetic acid.

The Pimentel Report, spon­sored in 1985 by the Nation­al Research Coun­cil, rec­og­nized the impor­tance of catal­y­sis and rec­om­mend­ed that nation­al pri­or­i­ty be giv­en to it. The report con­clud­ed, “Devel­op­ing insights fueled by an array of pow­er­ful instru­men­ta­tion are now mov­ing catal­y­sis from an art to a sci­ence. It is now pos­si­ble to see mol­e­cules as they react on sur­faces … Fun­da­men­tal advances in these var­i­ous facets of catal­y­sis are forth­com­ing that will have great eco­nom­ic and tech­no­log­i­cal impact … We have many envi­ron­men­tal pol­lu­tion prob­lems for which we need solu­tions that will match the suc­cess of the cat­alyt­ic con­vert­er used in auto­mo­biles … Research in catal­y­sis … is one of the research fields that deserve high pri­or­i­ty.” Catal­y­sis has and will con­tin­ue to be impor­tant in our search for alter­nate sources of ener­gy and for improve­ments to our envi­ron­ment. A recent report issued by the Nation­al Research Coun­cil con­cludes “catal­y­sis is crit­i­cal to two [chem­i­cal and petro­le­um & refin­ing] of the largest indus­tries in sales in the US; catal­y­sis is also a vital com­po­nent of a num­ber of the nation­al crit­i­cal tech­nolo­gies iden­ti­fied recent­ly by the Nation­al Crit­i­cal Tech­nolo­gies Panel.”
 
J. N. Armor
6 Feb­ru­ary 2001