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!