Estefanía Bello Jurado defenderá su tesis doctoral «Diseño de catalizadores y adsorbentes zeolíticos para la eliminación selectiva de óxidos de nitrógeno»:
Más información
Director: Manuel Moliner Marín
Programa de doctorado: Programa de Doctorado en Química Sostenible
💡 ITQ Inspire Lab
El próximo 12 de mayo de 2025 vuelve una nueva edición de ITQ Inspire Lab: Managing YOUR Science.
En esta ocasión contaremos con el Prof. Jean Pierre Gilson, Distinguished Professor, Emeritus. Laboratory of Catalysis & Spectrochemistry (LCS), ENSICAEN, Caen (France).
En la jornada se tratarán los siguientes puntos:
La jornada supone una gran oportunidad para aprender de su experiencia académica e industrial.
EN: First, Prof Gilson will begin by outlining the pathway between an invention and innovation, and the different steps in this arduous trip. He will also pose a series of thought-provoking questions related to this topic, which will set the basis for an open discussion with the young researchers. This meeting offers a valuable opportunity to benefit from Prof. Gilson’s extensive experience in both academia and industry.
Jean-Pierre GILSON
Jean-Pierre received his PhD in physical chemistry at the University of Namur (Belgium) under the guidance of Prof. Eric Derouane.
He started a 15-year industrial career in the US (UOP and Grace) and Europe (Shell, The Netherlands and France) in the design and commercial deployment of heterogeneous catalytic processes.
He moved to academia as a Professor of Catalysis in France and joined the LCS to develop his research. He designed a new curriculum (Catalytic Processes for Energy and Environment) and was the LCS Director for three four-years terms; the laboratory received the highest mark, A+, at the end of his last mandate. He expanded the scope of the LCS by adding new spectroscopic techniques (solid state NMR, Raman, UV-VIS) and a now large group dedicated to the preparation, characterization and application of nanoporous materials. He took a leave of absence from LCS to be attached for 4 years in the downstream R&D of Total (now TotalEnergies) as Director of their external research cooperations. He was awarded, together with Dr. Nesterenko (TotalEnergies), the Industrial Chair “NanoCleanEnergy” to investigate new routes to separate and upgrade natural gas within the Energy and Materials transitions.
He published 130+ peer reviewed papers and holds 50+ patent families. In industry, as a junior researcher, he contributed to the development of C3-4 and C6-9 paraffins aromatization catalysts (UOP), FCC catalysts and additives (Grace) and later, as a senior researcher, headed a team to develop 3 successfully commercialized catalysts for light naphtha (C5-6) isomerization, selective Ethylbenzene/Xylene isomerization to p-Xylene, Fischer-Tropsch heavy waxes hydro-isomerization and-cracking (Shell).
Jean-Pierre was a 1000 Talent Professor at DICP and invited Professor in China (Dalian Institute of Chemical Physics, Dalian and Jilin University, Changchun), Belgium (U. Namur) and Czechia (Charles University) and Scientific Advisor for some large energy companies.
🎓 ITQ Severo Ochoa Lecture
El próximo martes 13 de mayo contaremos con el Prof. Jean-Pierre Gilson – Distinguished Professor, Emeritus. Laboratory of Catalysis & Spectrochemistry (LCS), ENSICAEN, Caen (France) – quien impartirá la charla «Catalyst Deactivation & Regeneration. A Question of Life and Death».
«Catalyst Deactivation & Regeneration. A Question of Life and Death»
Together with activity and selectivity, stability is one of the three parameters characterizing the properties of a given catalyst. It is often neglected by academia (we are all very proud to report very high TOF and TON without discussing how long they last or how long it takes to reach them, respectively…) while, in fact, it determines the reactor design when considered a promising key component of an industrial process. It will also strongly impact the overall process economics by setting acceptable or unacceptable lower limits on the STY (Space Time Yield, i.e. productivity directly influencing the capital investment).
After giving a description of the various ways catalysts, in particular zeolite based, may deactivate, I will concentrate on ways to mitigate or to live with the problem. The key will be to first assess whether the deactivation process is fatal, i.e. the catalysts deteriorate beyond repair, or reversible and therefore design a regeneration procedure. A special focus will be paid to deactivation by coking (i.e. large polyaromatics immobilized on active sites or blocking access to the porous network where they are located) and regeneration of “coked” catalysts. In some cases, catalyst deactivation has a positive effect as in the “selectivation” of zeolite catalysts where selectivity increases while the catalyst activity decreases marginally by coke laydown, but its selectivity increases substantially. In other cases, the real catalyst is not only the inorganic material (e.g. SAPO-34 in MTO) but a hybrid between this material and organic species produced during the early stages of the catalyst life.
Coking can also be mitigated by catalyst engineering during their synthesis: for instance, nanometer-sized zeolites tend to coke like micrometer-sized zeolites, but their coke seems to be preferentially laid on the external/mesoporous surface where it is easier to be removed by combustion under much milder conditions.
The special case of oxygenated molecules processing in the framework of a greener chemistry will be illustrated with the example of anisole processing.
There is still much to be done in this field of catalysis, especially in the fundamentals of deactivation and the rewards will be important as they will decide upon the life and death of catalytic processes.
Alessandra de Marcos Galán defenderá su tesis doctoral «Influencia de la estructura zeolítica en la estabilización de especies de plata y su interacción con moléculas adsorbidas»:
Más información
Directora: Teresa Blasco Lanzuela
Programa de doctorado: Programa de Doctorado en Química Sostenible
¡Os invitamos a una nueva sesión de ITQ Severo Ochoa Lecture!
El próximo jueves 8 de mayo contaremos con la Prof. Veronique Van Speybroeck, Center for molecular Modeling, Ghent University (Belgium), quien impartirá la charla «New avenues in modelling zeolite catalysis at operating conditions bridging length and time scales».
«New avenues in modelling zeolite catalysis at operating conditions bridging length and time scales»
Industrial catalysts are highly complex with events occurring across a wide range of length and time scales that are highly impacted by the operating conditions. Unravelling this complexity is very challenging from purely experimental point of view. Molecular modelling is instrumental to understand the functioning of an industrial catalyst but also highly challenging as one needs to bridge the length time scale gap between the molecular scale and the industrial scale.
Within this talk I will show new avenues in modeling complex catalytic cycles starting from the molecular scale with the ambition to understand a successful catalytic trajectory of molecule at various length and time scales. Such trajectory consists of various events where molecules first need to enter the catalyst, where they maybe have to overcome a surface barrier, afterwards undergo diffusion to find sites for adsorption/desorption and reaction and finally the formed products leave the catalyst. All these events take place on vastly different time- and length scales varying from the picosecond to the second/hours and the nano- to micrometre. I will show that it is of utmost importance to model catalysts in a dynamic way at the conditions in which they do the work, furthermore I will give evidence that diffusion and reaction can be entangled and need to be modelled in a consistent way. To achieve this, new techniques originating from machine learning, reaction path discovery coupled with advanced kinetic theories need to be integrated in the standard catalysis modeling workflow. The methods will be illustrated by examples taken from C1 catalysis to convert molecules like CO2, CH3OH to high-value olefins and other chemical building blocks and biomass conversion over heterogeneous catalysts.
Veronique Van Speybroeck, Center for molecular Modeling, Ghent University (Belgium)
Veronique Van Speybroeck is full professor at the Ghent University and head of the Center for Molecular modeling (http://molmod.ugent.be), a multidisciplinary research center composed of about 40 researchers. She was trained as an engineer in Physics and obtained her PhD in 2001 from the Ghent University. She made significant contributions to the field of modeling nanoporous materials for catalysis, adsorption, separations; all applications are inspired and performed in close synergy with experimental groups. The research is driven by the ambition to model as close as possible realistic materials/processes. She played a pioneering role in development of molecular dynamics methods to simulate catalytic reactions at operating conditions. Currently, she is extending the horizon to integrate machine learning methods within molecular modeling of industrial processes to resolve complex catalytic cycles bridging length and time scales. She received two ERC grants, numerous recognitions and prizes, such as the Dr. Karl Wamsler innovation award in 2023 and the Francqui prize in exact sciences in 2024. She is also an elected member of the Royal (Flemish) Academy for Science and the Arts of Belgium (KVAB, www.kvab.be).
Carmen Tebar Soler defenderá su tesis doctoral «Desarrollo de catalizadores eficientes para la obtención de metano a partir de CO2»:
Más información
Directora: Patricia Concepción Heydorn
Programa de doctorado: Programa de Doctorado en Química Sostenible
🎓 ITQ Talks
El próximo miércoles Prof. Dr. Stephan Andreas Schunk, Executive Expert – Vice President bei hte GmbH & BASF SE, impartirá la charla ITQ Talks «Process Intensification using High Temperature Membrane Reactors in the Production of Bulk Chemicals»
Process Intensification using High Temperature Membrane Reactors in the Production of Bulk Chemicals
Direct catalytic dehydrogenation of alkanes retrieves increasing attention for on-demand production of light olefines. Those reactions are endothermic and typically subjected to thermodynamic limitations at lower reaction temperatures. A promising approach to positively influence the thermodynamic equilibrium is the application of integrated catalytic membrane reactors. By selective removal of hydrogen as a product the equilibrium can be shifted in respect to the alkane conversion according to the principle of Le Chatelier. For a later feasible process design information about catalyst and membrane kinetics as well as a combination thereof are required to match the space time yield of the catalytic reaction and the area time yield of the membrane permeation. In this seminar an experimental approach and the resulting potential of combination of catalysis and separation will be discussed.
¡Os invitamos a una nueva sesión de ITQ Severo Ochoa Lecture!
El próximo jueves 24 de abril contaremos con la Prof. Beata Tryba y el Prof. Jacek Przepiórski de la West Pomeranian University of Technology (Szczecin, Poland) quienes impartirán la charla «Photocatalytic and sorption materials for water and air treatment».
Prof. Beata Tryba
Prof. Beata Tryba is a researcher employed at the West Pomeranian University of Technology in Szczecin, Poland, since 2000. She works in the field of water treatment technology and photocatalysis. She has studied various sorption materials, such as activated carbon and exfoliated graphite for water treatment and TiO2-based photocatalytic materials for environmental applications, such as photocatalytic paints, bacterial inactivation, hydrogen generation, air and water purification. For 2 and a half years she worked in a Japanese group as a postdoctoral student and developed TiO2 materials coated with carbon, later also modified with iron species. TiO2-coated carbon materials showed comprehensive properties, such as high adsorption capacity and photocatalytic activity, and those modified with iron were additionally active in the photo-Fenton process and generated a large amount of hydroxyl radicals. Prof. Beata Tryba worked in the COST project “Phonasum” (Photocatalytic Technologies and New Nano-Surface Materials – Critical Issues) in the years 2006-2010. During her work in this project she visited CSIC – Instituto de Catálisis y Petroleoquímica in Madrid (Spain) for two weeks (STSM program) and worked with Prof. Jose Conesa on the topic of radical detection by EPR technique. Currently, prof. Beata Tryba is the head of the NCN (National Science Center) project “Research on photocatalytic decomposition of volatile organic compounds (VOCs) in a fluidized bed reactor”. Another research area carried out in prof. Tryba’s group is the study of photocatalytic composites based on metal foams and TiO2. These are very promising materials that have shown high photocatalytic activity towards removal of volatile organic compounds (VOCs).
Prof. Jacek Przepiórski
Prof. Jacek Przepiórski, since 1998 is a scientist and academic teacher at the West Pomeranian University of Technology in Szczecin. He specializes in carbon materials in terms of their use for gas and liquid purification and in catalysis, including photocatalysis. His main interests include hybrid porous materials, some aspects of coating formation, phenomena accompanying chemical processes and photocatalysis. He prefers innovative and unconventional approaches to problems in materials science and chemical engineering. He obtained his PhD in Japan (1998) and worked there as a post-doc (NEDO, AIST), mainly on the development of highly effective sorption materials for gas purification and on the unconventional introduction of dopants to solid materials. Internationally he cooperated mainly with Japanese teams (prof. A. Oya, M. Inagaki, M. Toyoda) and Spanish teams (Prof. Elena Perez-Mayoral, UNED). After 8 years as vice-rector, he recently returned to intensive research activities, implementing a project related to photocatalytic conversion of siloxanes in water. He works closely with Prof. B. Tryba, and recently with researchers from ITQ, which resulted in submitting a project to the Horizon program, submitting a publication and starting work on further ones. He works closely with industry, mainly as an advisor and solving various operational problems.
El Instituto de Tecnología Química (ITQ UPV-CSIC) participará el próximo sábado 5 de abril en el CPI Circuito Abierto de la Innovación, el cual está organizado por la Ciudad Politécnica de la Innovación (CPI) de la UPV. El recorrido lúdico sobre ciencia y tecnología es una actividad gratuita dirigida a todos los públicos que se celebrará en horario de 11h a 13:30h en la UPV.
A lo largo de la mañana se realizarán distintos talleres de divulgación científica. En concreto, el ITQ (UPV-CSIC) mostrará la ciencia detrás del hielo seco.
Aparte de talleres divulgativos, las personas que asistan al evento podrán recorrer laboratorios, institutos y unidades de investigación, en los que participarán en actividades diseñadas para mostrar la aplicación práctica de la innovación en diversos ámbitos.
Algunas de las actividades que podrán disfrutar los participantes a través de los diferentes itinerarios son: Aromas vino, Film biodegradable, Experimento CO2, Lantern XR, Lab fotónica industrial, Del invento al mercado, Lab. tecnologías móviles inmersivas, Demo stranger things y Técnicas de conservación del patrimonio.
Además del ITQ (UPV-CSIC) también participan en el recorrido el Instituto de Telecomunicaciones y Aplicaciones Multimedia (ITEAM); el Instituto Universitario de Ingeniería de Alimentos, Food UPV; el Hub de Museología Experimental del Instituto de Diseño y Fabricación (IDF); el Servicio de Promoción y Apoyo a la Investigación, Innovación y Transferencia (I2T) y, finalmente, el Instituto de Restauración de Patrimonio (IRP).
El propósito de la jornada es acercar a la ciudadanía al Parque Científico de la UPV y dar a conocer algunas de las tecnologías desarrolladas en sus laboratorios, de la mano de quienes las investigan y desarrollan cada día.
El punto de encuentro del CPI Circuito Abierto de la Innovación es el acceso J1 del edificio 8B, en la Avinguda dels Tarongers con la Calle Ingeniero Fausto Elio.
Ciudad Politécnica de la Innovación – UPV
La CPI es el Parque Científico de la UPV, un espacio donde convergen universidad, empresa y sociedad para impulsar la generación de conocimiento, la transferencia tecnológica y la innovación. En este ecosistema dinámico, más de 3.000 personas dedican su trabajo a la investigación y el desarrollo.
Actualmente, la CPI alberga gran parte de la actividad investigadora de la UPV, estructurada en 45 institutos y centros de investigación, dentro de una infraestructura científica de 140.000 m². Su misión es transformar el conocimiento en impacto real, promoviendo la transferencia de resultados y contribuyendo al desarrollo socioeconómico del entorno.
El viernes 28 de febrero de 2025 tendrá lugar la segunda jornada ITQ Severo Ochoa Lecture de 2025.
Concretamente contaremos con Shweta Agarwala quien impartirá la charla «A New Library of Green and Sustainable Electronic Materials» a las 11:30h en el Salón de Actos del ITQ (UPV-CSIC).
Más sobre Shweta Agarwala
Shweta Agarwala is an Associate Professor in the Department of Electronics and Computer Engineering at Aarhus University, Denmark, where she leads the pioneering Printed Electronics Technology Laboratory. Her work bridges disciplines, focusing on the development of sustainable electronic materials and devices, with a vision to drive environmental responsibility in electronics through the creation of fully biodegradable and flexible devices.
She completed her Master’s degree at Nanyang Technological University (Singapore) and earned her PhD from the National University of Singapore. She further honed her expertise in printed electronics at the Singapore Centre for 3D Printing before transitioning to her role in Denmark. An active contributor to the scientific community, Shweta has authored over 70 peer-reviewed publications in prestigious journals, books, and conferences. She is a senior IEEE member and Chair of IEEE Women in Engineering, Denmark Section, where she is dedicated to advancing gender diversity in engineering,
A New Library of Green and Sustainable Electronic Materials
The rapid proliferation of electronic devices has exacerbated the global e-waste crisis, necessitating a paradigm shift toward sustainable materials and manufacturing processes. Our research group is addressing this challenge by developing a comprehensive library of biodegradable and environmentally friendly electronic materials, including piezoelectrics, conductors, insulators, and, most recently, biodegradable metals. Inspired by nature and guided by principles of green chemistry, we engineer material microstructures to impart and enhance electronic functionalities while ensuring full biodegradability. These materials are formulated into functional inks suitable for printing on unconventional substrates, enabling low-energy and scalable fabrication of electronic devices.
Our approach integrates bio-derived polymers, ionic conductors, and metallic precursors to create high-performance electronic components that naturally degrade without harmful residues. The developed material platform is particularly suited for healthcare applications, where we are advancing biodegradable devices for muscle atrophy monitoring, wound healing, and eczema treatment. By bridging sustainable materials innovation with functional electronics, our work paves the way for the next generation of transient and eco-friendly electronic systems.
