On behalf of the local orga­niz­ing com­mit­tee and the Inter­na­tion­al Advi­so­ry Board (IAB), we would like to invite you to the 8th Inter­na­tion­al Con­fer­ence on Envi­ron­men­tal Catal­y­sis (ICEC). The ICEC returns to U.S. soil for the first time since 1998. As the 3.5 day event will be held August 24–27, 2014 at the His­toric Grove Park Inn Resort and Spa in beau­ti­ful and scenic Asheville, North Car­oli­na. Cur­rent tech­no­log­i­cal chal­lenges in envi­ron­men­tal catal­y­sis will be pre­sent­ed in 2 ple­nary pre­sen­ta­tions, 3 par­al­lel oral ses­sion and 2 poster ses­sions.

The Sci­en­tif­ic Pro­gramme of ICEC 2014 will be orga­nized around fol­low­ing main top­ics:

Sus­tain­able and clean ener­gy pro­duc­tion

• Bio-fuel catal­y­sis
• Fuel cells, elec­trolyz­ers and solar fuels
• Fuel reform­ing
• Cat­alyt­ic com­bus­tion

Emis­sion Con­trol

• Mobile and Sta­tion­ary source emis­sions
• TWC, Lean de-NOx, and de-Soot
• Low tem­per­a­ture exhaust appli­ca­tions

Indoor air clean­ing

• VOCs, PAH, adsorp­tion

Water Treat­ment

• Non-biodegrad­able organ­ic oxi­da­tion
• Nitrates reduc­tion
• Sludge removal

Green Chem­istry

• Bio­mass to chem­i­cals
• CO2 val­oriza­tion
• Envi­ron­men­tal­ly-friend­ly cat­alyt­ic process­es

 
TIMELINE

• Novem­ber 2013 — Call for papers, Sub­mis­sion plat­form opens
• Jan­u­ary 2014 — Abstract sub­mis­sion dead­line
• April 2014 — Noti­fi­ca­tion of accep­tance
• May 2014 — Ear­ly bird reg­is­tra­tion dead­line
• July 2014 — Sci­en­tif­ic pro­gram avail­able
• August 24–27, 2014 — 8th ICEC in Asheville, NC USA

Formal Invitation from Honorary Chair, Prof. Dr. Robert K. Grasselli

 
As we all know, catal­y­sis has its roots almost 200 years back, dat­ing to Berzel­lius, who first coined the word and intro­duced the con­cept of catal­y­sis in 1821. Much has been accom­plished in the area of catal­y­sis since that ear­ly time, par­tic­u­lar­ly in the past 100 years. In that peri­od, some of the most impor­tant cat­alyt­ic process­es that changed the com­plex­ion of our world to the bet­ter have been dis­cov­ered and com­mer­cial­ized, such as the Haber-Bosch Ammo­nia Syn­the­sis, Reform­ing, Cat­alyt­ic Crack­ing, Acid Catal­y­sis, Selec­tive Ammox­i­da­tion, Selec­tive Oxi­da­tion, and Exhaust Abate­ment Catal­y­sis. In today’s indus­tri­al­ized world, catal­y­sis is ubiq­ui­tous. Vir­tu­al­ly all man­u­fac­tured prod­ucts ben­e­fit by catal­y­sis some­where in the chain of their pro­duc­tion.

Oxi­da­tion catal­y­sis, which is the sub­ject of our 7th WCOC, com­mands a very key role. Name­ly, twen­ty five per­cent of the most impor­tant indus­tri­al organ­ic chem­i­cals and inter­me­di­ates are pro­duced by selec­tive het­ero­ge­neous oxi­da­tion catal­y­sis: these com­prise acrolein, acrylic acid, acry­loni­trile, methacrylic acid, male­ic anhy­dride, phthal­ic anhy­dride, eth­yl­ene oxide and propy­lene oxide.

Over the past fifty years great efforts have been expand­ed, by indus­tri­al, as well as, aca­d­e­m­ic researchers, to make selec­tive oxi­da­tion process­es and their cat­a­lysts ever more effi­cient and envi­ron­men­tal­ly friend­lier. The very term “selec­tive oxi­da­tion catal­y­sis” implies effi­cien­cy, preser­va­tion of mat­ter and envi­ron­men­tal respon­si­bil­i­ty. The recent­ly coined term “green chem­istry” has already been prac­ticed for the past fifty years by researchers active in the area of selec­tive oxi­da­tion catal­y­sis, and that with ever-greater prowess, par­tic­u­lar­ly as the fun­da­men­tal under­stand­ing of cat­a­lyst behav­ior on an atom­ic and mol­e­c­u­lar lev­el has con­tin­u­ous­ly improved and been refined; through the aid of sophis­ti­cat­ed spec­tro­scop­ic tech­niques.

In our upcom­ing 7th WCOC we con­tin­ue the tra­di­tion of the ear­li­er World Oxi­da­tion Con­gress­es by aim­ing to fur­ther expand the fun­da­men­tal knowl­edge, as well as, tech­no­log­i­cal progress achieved in the field of oxi­da­tion catal­y­sis in gen­er­al, and selec­tive oxi­da­tion in par­tic­u­lar, and to help lay the foun­da­tion for new research and imple­men­ta­tion in our cho­sen dis­ci­pline. The over­all theme of our con­gress is “From Fun­da­men­tals to Appli­ca­tions”.

We cor­dial­ly invite you to active­ly par­tic­i­pate in our meet­ing in St. Louis, the Gate­way to the West, in order to make our Con­gress anoth­er WCOC suc­cess!