• Active or completed projects: 18
• Estimated ATP funding: $ 68.29 M
• Industry cost-share funding: $ 73.13 M

Potential for U.S. Economic Benefit. Potential for U.S. Economic Benefit. Overstating the commercial importance of catalysis would take some creativity. Catalysis transforms vast reservoirs of chemical feedstocks into products like nylon and polyethylene polymers, themselves the industrial starting point for thousands of products ranging from milk jugs and mountain-climbing rope to toys and textiles. Catalysis, along with the biologically derived technologies known as biocatalysis, sculpts chemical precursors into the precise molecular shapes that are the heart of many pharmaceuticals. And that only hints at the roles catalysis plays.

In the ever more global commercial arena, catalysis becomes ever more central to the competitiveness of individual products, companies, industries, and countries. Those who develop new cost-effective catalysts and biocatalysts that improve the yields of products, cheapen or simplify processes, enable vendors to meet customers' needs more quickly and precisely, open up attractive products previously too costly for the marketplace, or reduce the amount of pollution produced during manufacturing processes will gain clear competitive advantages.

Catalysis is used in over 90 percent of the manufacturing process in the U.S. chemical industry, transforming raw chemical ingredients into petroleum products, synthetic rubber and plastics, food products, chemicals, and pharmaceuticals--as well as controlling vehicle and industry emissions. In economic terms, the U.S. chemical industry produces over 7,000 different products worth an estimated $375 billion per year, and generates 10 percent of the nation's total exports. Worldwide, the manufacture of catalysts themselves, which come in forms as disparate as biological enzymes (specialized proteins) to fine metal powders to complex inorganic compounds called zeolites, is a $10 billion industry. Catalysis is very big business.

Improving catalysts and catalysis processes promises several important payoffs downstream in manufacturing. New catalysts that are more precisely designed than ones in present use can maximize desired products while minimizing byproducts. New catalysts will enable engineers to produce the same products using less expensive feedstocks or even to replace feedstocks based on non-renewable and depletable resources, such as petroleum, with renewable ones, such as grains or switch grass. Another payoff, one that analysts predict will grow in relative importance in the coming years, will come from catalysis technologies that reduce pollution by obviating the need for organic solvents, eliminating troublesome byproducts that subsequently need to be disposed of, or converting pollution that is produced during manufacturing processes into more benign forms. Pollution prevention and abatement catalysts like these will play increasingly large roles in reducing the costs of environmental compliance while making products more attractive to environmentally concerned clientele.

Technology Challenge. The program builds on and accelerates industry's own long-term attempts to develop the analytical tools, synthetic abilities, and theoretical insight to identify, design, and implement new catalytic tools and processes of major economic importance. The key technical objectives of this ATP focused program include:

• improved understanding of the relationships between catalyst structure and function;
• innovative techniques for increasing the reliability of manufacturing processes for catalysts; and
• innovative approaches to modeling, designing, and scaling catalytic and biocatalytic reactors.

The program will leverage these technical objectives to reach its strategic business goals, which include:

• significantly reducing the manufacturing cost and environmental impacts of the commercial production of chemicals and plastics;
• significantly reducing the time and costs involved in the development both of new catalysts and biocatalysts and of catalytic processes and products; and
• significantly accelerating the availability of computational tools for catalysis.

Leap-frog advances in catalysis of the sort targeted in this ATP focused program can come only from research of uncommon technical difficulty. At the bottom of every catalytic process are complex physical and chemical dramas playing out on tiny scales, often at arresting speeds and under surveillance- unfriendly conditions common in industrial processes, factors that traditionally have made scientific study and design of catalysis technologies extremely challenging, costly, or technically impossible. Yet it is precisely this sort of knowledge and investigation that harbors the greatest potential payoffs. Those who know more about catalysis and harness that knowledge into new and better catalysis technology will be the ones with the right stuff in tomorrow's commercial and environmental contexts. The industry-led approach facilitated through the ATP focused program is to improve the integration of catalysis and biocatalysis design and development with new process technology and chemical manufacturing. Said differently, the goal is a generic strategy for more cost-effective and efficient R&D for arriving at good catalysis solutions to any particular industrial problem.

Industry Commitment. A very small percentage of industry's research goes into the high-risk catalysis work within the scope of this program. The bulk of industrial catalysis research aims at incremental improvements in existing catalysis technologies. The need to improve the balance between high- and low-risk research was aired at a NIST workshop convened in April 1994. This event prompted intense industry discussions, which led to the submission of over 30 "white papers" representing more than 45 companies and several industry associations. These white papers outline specific commercially important R&D efforts in catalysis and biocatalysis technologies that many companies would like to pursue in a partnership with the ATP.

Significance of ATP Funds. The ATP focused program in catalysis and biocatalysis technologies will accelerate and leverage industry's investment in higher risk research that harbors greater payoffs in the form of sustained competitiveness than the shorter term research that now predominates. The ATP focused program will enable a roughly 10 percent growth in industry's high-risk catalysis research, an area that now receives very limited government support beyond the basic sciences despite increased vulnerability to technology breakthroughs in other countries. Just as important, the focused program will forge novel liaisons for catalysis technology research that would not have formed without the collective participation of many companies throughout the program's planning and implementation. In that sense, the ATP itself could be a catalyst of new ways of doing business.

Additional Information. For information about eligibility, how to apply, and cost-sharing requirements, contact the Advanced Technology Program:

800-ATP-FUND (800-287-3863)
email: atp@nist.gov
fax: (301) 926-9524
A430 Administration Building
National Institute of Standards and Technology
Gaithersburg, MD 20899-0001

For technical information, contact:
Robert Fireovid, Program Manager
(301) 975-5457
email: robert.b-f@nist.gov
fax: (301) 548-1087

Date created: January 1999
Last updated: April 12, 2005