Institute of Catalysis and Surface Chemistry,
Polish Academy of Sciences

Introduction

The Institute of Catalysis and Surface Chemistry of the Polish Academy of Sciences (ICSC) (atom.ik-pan.krakow.pl) employs 103 persons including 42 research staff with 15 professors and associate professors (docent) specialising in various aspects of catalysis, surface chemistry and colloid science. ICSC has a status of a Centre of Excellence - Cracow Research Centre of Molecular Catalysis and Soft Matter Chemistry CATCOLL.

The competences

The Institute pursues interdisciplinary studies of the phenomena occurring at gas/solid, gas/liquid and liquid/solid interfaces, with an emphasis on their significance in catalysis, adsorption, flotation and detergency. The bulk of research encompasses design, synthesis, and testing of new, advanced, materials and processes. In the area of catalysis the focus is on developing new catalysts with well-defined structure-property relations, tunable to the requirements of a particular catalytic reaction. The materials under investigation include new types of oxidic structures, nanodispersed metal catalysts and novel micro- and mesoporous inorganic solids. The work is targeted at application in hydrocarbons processing, end-of-pipe environmental catalysis, CO₂ utilization, fuel cells and fine chemistry processes, and involves also the description of kinetic and mechanistic aspects oif studied processes. An important aspect of research is to provide the theoretical background for experimental studies. The field of expertise ranges from elucidating catalytic reaction mechanism and modelling the structures of transition metal oxides, composite nanomaterials and enzyme active centres, to describing surfactant adsorption at liquid/gas and liquid/liquid interfaces, and simulating polymer particle adsorption on solid homogeneous surfaces.

The role in NEXT-GTL

ICSC will contribute to two main aspects:

1. definition and preparation of suitable he-teropolyanion-based catalyst component to be integrated in the new catalysts for methane conversion to CH₃OH/DME


2. theoretical analysis/modeling of the activation of C-H bond in methane, both for the process of direct low temperature conversion of methane to methanol and/or DME, and for the process of methane conversion to aromatics.

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