News Picture Generic

Global Challenges in Chemicals and Energy - Standardizing and Accelerating R&D

May 10, 2013

On 19th March 2013 Chemspeed held a webinar, organized by Chemical and Engineering News (C&EN), with more than 200 live attendees. Title: Global Challenges in Chemicals and Energy - Standardising and Accelerating R&D Abstract:

  • Global challenges in chemicals and energy comprise:
  • Increasing constraints in supply from fossil fuels
  • Increasing constraints by regulations (CO2 emission, global warming, …)
  • Increasing demand spurred by the dynamic growth in the BRICS countries
  • By 2020 China is projected to consume more than 50% of global energy.

Correspondingly, R&D organizations need to cope with these challenges typically with the same amount of resources. The only way out of this “catch 22” is to standardize and accelerate R&D via enabling technologies. Case studies and success stories on the applications of enabling, automated tools address:

  • Inorganic catalyst preparation by incipient wetness and excessive liquid impregnation, pH-controlled (co-)precipitation (mixed oxides), hydrothermal treatment (zeolites) and screening, e.g. hydrogenation, alkylation, isomerization, oxidation, cracking
  • Organic and organometallic catalyst synthesis and screening, e.g. polyolefins, rubbers, fine and speciality chemicals
  • Solution, emulsion, suspension, mass, pressure polymerization, e.g. latexes, polycarbonates, polyurethanes, polyimides
  • Catalyst testing / optimization in batch, semi-continuous, continuous mode
  • Alternative energy solutions (e.g. solar cell, battery, fuel cell, H2 storage materials) and renewable chemicals (e.g. from biomass, CO2)

For more information, please contact Dr. Michael Schneider, Sr VP Business Development (e-mail, +41 61 8169500)

Other Recent News

Discover more news articles you might be interested in

Read more about High-throughput solid microsampling through stochastic robotic automation
News Picture 1 1 V2
Featured
Jul
14

High-throughput solid microsampling through stochastic robotic automation

Solid sampling at the sub-milligram and milligram scale remains a major bottleneck for high-throughput chemistry or material sciences, as existing approaches rely on manual handling or slow deterministic microsampling that do not readily scale.

Here we present STORMS, an automated STOchastic Robotic MicroSampling system that enables fast, reliable and parallel sampling of solid materials at sub-milligram and milligram masses. 

Read more about Parameter efficient multi-model vision assistant for polymer solvation behaviour inference
News Picture 1 1 V2
Jun
30

Parameter efficient multi-model vision assistant for polymer solvation behaviour inference

Polymer–solvent systems exhibit complex solvation behaviours encompassing a diverse range of phenomena, including swelling, gelation, and dispersion. Accurate interpretation is often hindered by subjectivity, particularly in manual rapid screening assessments. While computer vision models hold significant promise to replace the reliance on human evaluation for inference, their adoption is limited by the lack of domain-specific datasets tailored, in our case, to polymer–solvent systems.

Read more about Continuous Flow Synthesis of Diglycolamides for Rare-Earth Elements Recovery: Algorithm-Accelerated Reaction Optimization Coupled with Automated Extraction Evaluation
News Picture 1 1 V2
Featured
Jun
23

Continuous Flow Synthesis of Diglycolamides for Rare-Earth Elements Recovery: Algorithm-Accelerated Reaction Optimization Coupled with Automated Extraction Evaluation

A first example of diglycolamide flow synthesis was developed, showcasing algorithm-accelerated reaction optimization and its potential to accelerate ligand discovery and enable autonomous, AIcontrolled manufacturing of critical materials. The increasing demand for manufacturing rare-earth elements (REEs) as critical materials has intensified research on sustainable synthesis of advanced extractants such as diglycolamides (DGAs).

© Chemspeed (part of Bruker) 2026