The Sustainable Development Goals "Affordable and clean energy" and "Sustainable consumption and production" are directly related to catalytic technologies such as electrocatalytic water splitting for the production of hydrogen using solar and wind energy or the sustainable synthesis of fuels from carbon dioxide or of functional chemicals from renewable raw materials.
The goals of closed material cycles or a carbon-neutral chemical industry will also not be achievable without catalysis. However, world nutrition, health, clean water and climate-neutral action are also areas in which catalysis is essential and will become increasingly important in the future.
Catalysis research stands out as an interdisciplinary field that benefits from many related disciplines and directly provides essential contributions to them. For example, materials science for the development of new stable catalyst materials, engineering sciences for the development of new reactors and reactor concepts and biology for enzyme research all play a decisive role in advancing the field of catalysis.
publishing date November 2023