SubscribeAvantium offers a range of services to clients in the chemical and life science industries. These focus on catalysis, including catalyst development, catalyst screening and testing commercially available catalysts.
We have developed proprietary hardware platforms to screen homogeneous and heterogeneous catalysts for a broad range of applications.
Our staff includes experts in both heterogeneous and homogeneous catalysis. They have proven industry experience in their fields, and will oversee the scoping and execution of projects and evaluation of data. A team of technologists with a thorough understanding of catalyst preparation, testing and analysis, and who are specialized in carrying out high-throughput R&D programs, run our customers' projects, and are at their disposal when services are contracted to Avantium.
We offer the following services to the (petro) chemical industries:
- Catalyst testing
- Catalyst development
- Polymerization
We offer the following services to the life science industries:
- Quick chemistry screen
- Homogeneous catalyst improvement
Catalyst Testing
Heterogeneous Catalysis Platform
Avantium's fixed bed screening equipment, the Nanoflow, has been engineered to generate high-quality test results under idealized commercial operating conditions. The Nanoflow equipment is designed to perform catalyst testing under isothermal conditions, plug flow conditions and with a low pressure drop.
The proven scalability of our unique fixed bed reactor platform ensures rapid and reliable technology transfer to pilot and commercial production plants.
The Nanoflow platform can be operated under gas phase, trickle phase and liquid phase conditions. The Nanoflow technology comprises the capability of feeding of multiple gases, vapors and liquids. Product analysis is done online by state-of-the-art analytical techniques such as fast-GC and multi-channel micro-GC. Automated continuous liquid sampling for offline analysis is one of the features that can be applied in trickle phase testing. The Nanoflow units contain up to 64 parallel reactors that are based on modules with 4-16 reactors.
The Nanoflow platform has successfully been applied in:
- Selective gas phase oxidation
- Selective gas phase and trickle phase hydrogenation
- Water-gas shift
- Ammoxidation
- Aldol condensation
- Fischer-Tropsch conversions
- Gas phase and trickle phase refinery applications with model and commercial feeds.
Homogeneous catalysis platform
Avantium has a platform that can address a wide range of chemical applications using homogeneous catalysts under commercially relevant conditions. The platform comprises:
- Automated catalyst preparation under controlled atmosphere
- Automated reaction mixture preparation under ambient or controlled atmosphere
- Automated sample handling and sample work-up
- Reaction volumes of 1.5-75 ml
- Temperatures between -20 and 275°C
- Pressures between 1 and 250 bar
- Continuous gas flow conditions or constant pressure conditions (semi-batch operation).
- Gas uptake monitoring
- Continuous process monitoring and data storage.
The platform has successfully been applied in a variety of commercial liquid phase oxidation applications and hydrogenation applications.
Catalyst Development
Avantium developed fully integrated and automated workflows for catalyst development programs, comprising design of experiments, high-throughput synthesis and testing of heterogeneous catalysts and homogeneous catalysts, data evaluation and modeling.
Avantium can create teams with experienced professionals that are experts in heterogeneous catalysis, homogeneous catalysis and catalyst testing in the areas of fine chemical, chemical and petrochemical applications. Our professionals can form expert teams with our customers to fully utilize knowledge and know-how from both parties.
Avantium has experimental strategies for discovery of novel catalyst compositions and optimization of commercial catalyst compositions. We utilize advanced computational techniques to correlate catalyst performance to catalyst structure and -in case of heterogeneous catalysts- catalyst preparation method. In combination with DoE and Principle Component Analysis, these tools can be used to build knowledge as the project progresses, select the statistically most meaningful experiments and focus experimentation in order to reach technical targets in the shortest time possible. Catalyst characterization by techniques such as XRD, XPS, DSC and porosimetry can be integrated in the workflow to provide catalyst structure-performance correlations.
Our general approach to catalyst development programs is to conduct experiments with a high level of relevance to commercial operation. Avantium has world-leading capabilities for parallel heterogeneous catalyst synthesis by commercially applied techniques such as incipient wetness impregnation and parallel precipitation. As a consequence, the Avantium tools also provide possibilities to determine the optimum operating window for catalyst scale-up. We utilize scaled-down parallel reactors that can operate under commercial conditions with commercial feeds as well as model feeds.
Catalyst Library
Avantium has compiled a large collection of catalytic materials that are used for developing new or improved chemical processes for the pharmaceutical and chemical industries.
The Avantium catalyst library is comprised of:
- The Avantium heterogeneous catalyst library
- The Avantium homogeneous catalyst library
- The Avantium biocatalyst library
The Avantium heterogeneous catalyst library
- Commercial heterogeneous catalyst library
The catalysts in this library are available at commercial scale. Representative samples of these products from a large number of catalyst supplier companies are shelf-available: ready for testing in our process development projects. The commercial heterogeneous catalyst library comprises supported precious metal catalysts, base metal catalysts, zeolites, clays and various catalyst support materials.
- Non-commercial heterogeneous catalyst library
The catalytic materials that are developed in catalyst improvement programs are often placed in this library (unless confidentiality agreements prohibit this). Over the course of the past few years a large collection of mono-, bi-, tri- and multi-metallic materials have been prepared in our automated parallel cat-prep units. The materials are derived from many elements in the periodic table (transition metals) in combination with a series of catalyst support materials.
The Avantium homogeneous catalyst library
- Non-chiral ligand library
Catalysts for non-chiral homogeneous reactions, such as hydrogenation, hydroformylation, Heck-reactions, Suzuki-reactions, and aryl amination reactions, etc, are also prepared used as an in situ prepared transition metal complex, or as a pre-synthesized complex.
Typical ligands in the non-chiral ligand library are mono-, bi and tri-dentate phosphines, phosphites, imines, aminoalcohols, etc.
- Transition metal complexes
In some cases in situ catalyst preparation is not the preferred option. In these cases one should start with preformed transition metal complexes. Several (late) transition metal complexes are available for testing.
- Metallocenes and Ziegler-Natta catalysts
For olefin polymerization studies, often metallocene and other single site catalysts are employed. These complexes are typically derived from the metals titanium, zirconium, hafnium. Both half-sandwich and double sandwich complexes are present, as well as constrained geometry catalysts. Some catalytic materials for Ziegler Natta polymerization reactions are also available for screening.
- Descriptor databases
In relation with our QSPR modeling activities we have generated descriptor databases for the ligands and catalysts in our catalyst library. The descriptor databases also contain descriptors of compounds that have not yet been synthesized.