Catalysis Workshop at ANKA

“Shining Synchrotron Light on Catalysts at Work – Opportunities and Limitations” was the title of the workshop that took place on October 8, 2010, in Karlsruhe (Germany) as part of the ANKA/KNMF user meeting. More than 80 German and international guests met at this event. Tilo Baumbach (director of ANKA, Karlsruhe) outlined in his warm welcome speech that ANKA is more than only an open facility to future catalysis research — it really wants to act as “catalyst” for studying the structure of catalysts and properties in catalytic reactors. Jan-Dierk Grunwaldt, as one of the three organizers of this workshop, also welcomed the workshop participants from academia and industry and outlined the importance of studying catalysts under reaction conditions: More than 95% of all chemical products have “seen” a catalyst in course of their production. New catalysts are required in energy conversion, as well as more efficient and new catalysts in fine chemistry and environmental technology. Since the catalytic structure is mostly correlated to the structure on the atomic level, information about it is of profound importance. This was already demonstrated by Thorsten Ressler in his talk “Catalysis and Synchrotron Radiation” on the main ANKA/KMNF user meeting the day before. ANKA, with its mid-hard X-ray, soft X-ray, and infrared beamlines and embedded in the scientific environment of the KIT, is an excellent place for catalysis research as Stefan Mangold (ANKA) demonstrated in his short overview, and it is developing more and more toward this direction.