CATPRO – website
Hosting institution: Research Institute of Inorganic Chemistry
The CATPRO research infrastructure is oriented on the operation of facilities for research and development on efficient use of carbon-energy resources using catalytic processes. One of the biggest challenges in research and development of transformation of carbon-energy raw materials including the use of biomass for the production of advanced liquid fuels and chemicals is the gap between the laboratory and industrial scales. CATPRO enables to perform almost all activities in research and development value chain that are essential to overcome that gap and for development of heterogeneous catalysts and catalyst processes. CATPRO provides expertise and services covering catalyst synthesis and preparation scale-up, catalyst forming and shaping, catalyst testing and process development in bench scale and analysis and identification of complex organic product mixtures. CATPRO is also an open platform between the academia and industry that will stimulate their collaboration.
Future development
Future development of CATPRO will concentrate on reinvestment in the existing research infrastructure, which allows keeping its quality and technological level up-to-date, including automation and safety of operation and modularity of the experimental set-ups. At the same time, CATPRO will focus on introduction of new services according to the regularly analysed users´ requirements and research and development trends in the field of catalytic processes. In this way, services in the most perspective research and development areas such as biomass-to-chemicals transformations and demonstration of newly developed technologies will be improved.
Socio-economic impact
CATPRO has a strong potential to establish itself as an important partner for the research community in the field of heterogeneous catalysts and related processes in Europe. The unique research infrastructure of CATPRO enable to overcome existing deficits in the connection between fundamental and applied research in the field. CATPRO allows its users to progress to the higher technology readiness level of processes they are developing. This jointly with the bench scale demonstration of the processes increase their attractiveness for the industry and potential investors and take them closer to implementation of research and development results on the market. CATPRO strengthens the international competitiveness of the Czech Republic in the field of catalysis and sustainable catalytic processes with associated benefits in the area of environmental protection, sustainable economy and society well-being.
