iCSI director Hilde Venvik presented highlights from the SFI at the Hyfer science festival orgainized by NTNU, and showed the importance of the research done through eighth years.  

Hyfer was an open two-days event and the morning session Friday  22.09. was titled Chemistry, Industry, Energy. In order to achieve the national and global climate goals, it is crucial for the chemical process industry to achieve climate neutrality, which in turn will require a lot of renewable energy. In the seminar we learned about these challenges from professors and industry experts who talked about the transition to an energy-efficient and sustainable chemical process industry in Norway. 

Photo showing Department leader Jens-Petter Andreassen at Department of Chemical Engineering (IKP) opening the seminar (left) and NTNU professors Hilde Venvik and Edd Blekkan in conversation with professor Juma Haydary from Slovak University of Technology (right). Professor Haydary talked about Pyrolysis and gasification of waste and biomass.

Before the Europacat 2023 Congress was closed, the attendees were welcomed to the next congress, taking place in Trondheim in 2025. This will be the 16th European Congress on Catalysis under the auspices of the European Federation of Catalysis Societies (EFCATS) and organized as a joint effort of the Nordic Catalysis Societies. iCSI director Hilde Johnsen Venvik will act as chair for the Congress and Anne Hoff and Magnus Rønning are vice-chairs. 

Visit our website for more information and register for receiving calls for abstract and other important announcements! 

We are looking for sponsors and encourage potential partners to get in touch via sponsoreuropacat2025@konferanser.ntnu.no. We have several different sponsorship packages that should be of interest.

A delegation of 31 attendees from Trondheim, Oslo and Stavanger participated at the EuropaCat 2023 Congress taking place in Prague August 27-September 1. Among them were several iCSI researchers presenting results obtained in the SFI. This was the first major European catalysis conference since the pandemic, resulting in a very large participation (1700 researchers and 90 sponsors/exhibitors) and a good atmosphere and joy of seeing each other among delegates who had not met each other for a long time. 

Silje Fosse Håkonsen from SINTEF gave a talk about Phosphorous continamination of a V/W-TiO₂ Monolith Catalyst used for NH₃-SCR of NO_x in biofuel combustion exhaust - results obtained in Industrial Innovation Area II.

Bjørn Gading Solemsli from Univresity of Oslo talked about Methylation of light alkenes and aromatics through step-wise reaction with methane in Cu-exchanged Zeolites - results from Idustrial Innovation Area V.

The postdocs Sebatian Prodinger (UiO) and Tina Bergh (NTNU) showed posters: 

In the photo in the middle, Tina stands between Albert Miro í Rovira (NTNU) and Ingeborg-Helene Svenum (SINTEF).

Friday August 11, PhD candidate Karoline Kvande from iCSI and the Department of Chemistry at UiO defended her doctoral thesis with the title

Compositional and Mechanistic Studies of Cu-zeolites for the Direct Activation of Lower Alkanes

Karoline's work has been a part of the Industrial Innovation Area The next step in direct activation of lower alkanes, with Professor Stian Svelle, UiO as supervisor and Professor Unni Olsbye, UiO, Senior Research Scientist Pablo Beato, Topsoe A/S and Associate Professor Elisa Borfecchia University of Turin as co-supervisors

Adjudication committee:
Professor Andrew Beale Department of Chemistry, University College London
Associate Professor Susanne Mossin Department of Chemistry, Technical University of Denmark
Professor Truls Norby Department of Chemistry, University of Oslo

The title of the trial lecture was:

Photocatalysis of methane using non-noble metal oxides

More details and a summary of Karolines work is given at UiO's website.

Congratulations, Dr Karoline!

During the seminar week at NTNU, the award from the Norwegian Chemical Society (NKS) for the best catalysis PhD 2022 was given to 

Huong Huynh, from The University of Stavanger, for the thesis

CO₂ methanation on Ni-Fe based catalysts: Mechanistic and structured reactor study

Her supervisor during the work has been professor Zhixin Yu. Huong is now employed by Aker Solutions in Stavanger.  

Congratulations! 

Huong Huynh in the middle between Hilde Johnsen Venvik and Nikolaos Tsakoumis from the NKS Catalysis group

June 5-6 the last iCSI Annual seminar took place at NTNU, summing up eight years hard work in the SFI. Monday, project leaders together with representatives from the industry partners gave an overview of the main achivements in the six different Industrial Innovation Areas. 

Chair of the Board, Pablo Beato from Topsoe, was opening the seminar 

Tuesday,  there were scientific presentations by iCSI PhD candidates and members of the scientific advisory committee, as well as nice words from the dean of NV faculty and the Research Council of Norway. Centre director Hilde Johnsen Venvik gave an overview of her experiences, while a former iCSI PhD showed us a glimpse of his career after iCSI and his new employer CoorsTek. 

Centre director Hilde Johnsen Venvik summing up achivements and personal experiences.

The seminar was set up to be continued with a CATHEX seminar June 7-8, with guest from partner universities from Oslo, Toronto, Madison, Cape Town and Shanghai.  Approximately 70 catalysis researchers were gathered during the week. 

 a subsidiary of INEOS, plans to build a new clean hydrogen supply hub at its chemical manufacturing site in Rafnes. The plan includes to build a 20MW electrolyser to produce clean hydrogen through the electrolysis of water, powered by zero-carbon electricity. This project will lead to a minimum reduction of an estimated 22,000 tonnes of CO₂ per year by reducing the carbon footprint of INEOS’s operations in Norway and serving as a hub to provide hydrogen to the Norwegian transport sector. See more of the press release at INEO's webpage

iCSI PhD candidate Karoline Kvande met the Minister of research and higher education, Henrik Asheim, when he visited the Department of Chemistry June 11. She got the opportunity to tell him why the allocation of 39 million NOK from the Ministry to new Instrument workshop facilities is important for her research.

Photo: Ola Gamst Sæther, UiO

Links to articles in Uniforum and Titan,  UiO news pages. 

Dimitrios Pappas has received the award for the best PhD thesis 2021 from the European Federation of Catalysis Societies. iCSI is proud to have talented PhD candidates and congratulates Dimitrios and Professor Stian Svelle on the award!

The EFCATS award will be presented at the 15th European Congress on Catalysis, Europacat 2023 (Prague, August 27-September 2023), but already being formally given at an online EFCATS event on September 2 2021 (2-5 pm).

Dagens Næringsliv brings a story from K A Rasmussen, telling about gold as an attractive investment property. This year, the banking crisis and the US debt ceiling have caused investors to seek safety in gold, and the gold price has recently touched the all-time high levels from 2020. 

The factory in Hamar also takes in other precious metals than gold, including several tens of tonnes of silver a year. Photo showing Erik Olsen watching the melting of silver, which takes place at 961.8 °C.  (Photo: Gunnar Lier)

The Research Council of Norway has announced that the SFF (Center of Excellence) application from Department of Chemistry, UiO, is among 36 out of 161 which are invited to the second round of the application process. Approximately 11 new SFFs will be announced in June 2022, so 1/3 of the 36 will in the end succeed in their efforts of becoming a Centre of Excellence. An SFF shall promote concentrated, focused and long-term research efforts at a high international level.

The professors Stian Svelle, Unni Olsbye and Anja Sjåstad from iCSI are part of the group behind the CHANGE application.

iSCI wish you the best with 2nd round of application!

We are proud to announce that Professor Stian Svelle (iCSI at UiO) and his collaborating colleagues at University of Turin has a new paper published in Angewandte Chemie. This journal has an Excellent Impact Factor 15.3 and a leading position among scholarly journals with a focus on general chemistry. In general, an impact factor of 10 or greater is considered an excellent score, so beeing accepted for publishing here is a clear indication of high quality research.

Congratulation to Stian and coworkers! 

Link to publication

Dynea's 2^nd Silver Formaldehyde Conference took place on September 20-22, in Tarcal, Hungary. This is the biannual event organized by Dynea’s Technology Centre, the Licensing and Project’s department.

The international Silver Formaldehyde community comprised of 30 experts from 15 companies and Dynea Formaldehyde licensees from chemical/petrochemical industry as well as academia across the globe came together and shared their views and experiences as well as the most updated developments and improvements within the field.

The conference technical program during the first day focused on:

• Recent successful project deliveries by Dynea including the state-of-the-art of the fasil process technology
• Improvements within process control as well as performance management using process digitalization
• Experiences from the fasil plant operation presented by the licensees - Latest R&D activities within silver catalyst development and also sustainable methods for methanol production.

During the workshop session and group discussions, interesting topics were raised within process improvements and the participants shared their best practices and operational challenges, highlighting the focus areas for further work.

In the last day of the conference, the participants visited the 3^rd formalin production line (completed and commissioned in 2017) at the BCKC3 formalin plant at Kazincbarcika and were introduced the state of the art of fasil process design and technology via a guided tour.

The next formaldehyde conference is planned to be held in 2024.

Dynea also participated in the World Methanol Conference 2022 in Barcelona, Spain, November 15-17. There, Dynea's Lars Axelsen contributed with a lecture entitled Formaldehyde Outlook - Market & Technology.

As the sixth of the iCSI PhD candidates, Asbjørn Slagtern Fjellvåg defended his thesis 30.09.2022.

The title of the thesis is
Platinum Catchment by Noble Metal Alloys and structural studies of Pt- and Rh-containing perovskites

The work has been a part of iCSI Industrial Innovation Area 21st century ammonia oxidation and nitric acid technology development, with Professor Anja Olafsen Sjåstad as supervisor and David Waller from Yara as co-supervisor.

Adjudication committee:
Professor J Paul Attfield, School of Chemistry, The University of Edinburgh, United Kingdom    
Professor Mari-Ann Einarsrud, Institutt for materialteknologi, NTNU, Norway
Administrator: Ass. Professor Hanne Røberg-Larsen, Department of Chemistry, UiO, Norway

The title of the trial lecture was:
Synchrotron X-ray methods as basis to follow chemical reactions in-situ/operando - status and perspectives

Congratulations, Dr. Asbjørn!

According to a press release September 15, a renewable hydrogen plant will be built to provide feedstock into the Yara ammonia operations near Karratha in Western Australia following the final investment decision on the project.

Known as Project Yuri, Yara Clean Ammonia has collaborated with ENGIE to develop the plant, which will be built on the existing Yara Pilbara lease and adjacent to the company’s world-scale anhydrous ammonia production facility. This would be the first established operational facilities in Western Australia to receive and use green hydrogen molecules to produce clean ammonia.

Albeit small, this will provide Yara and partners significant learning. The Yuri project includes a 10 MW electrolyzer, 18 MW of solar PV and battery storage. Once completed, the project will be one of Australia’s largest electrolysers, capable of producing up to 640 tonnes of green hydrogen each year.

The significance of the project has been recognized by the Australian Government with a AUD 47.5 million grant through ARENA’s Renewable Hydrogen Deployment Funding Round. The Western Australian State Government has also supported Yuri with a AUD 2 million grant contribution from the State’s Renewable Hydrogen Fund.

The renewable hydrogen production is scheduled to commence and be supplied to the ammonia plant in 2024.

“Yuri is a key step in the decarbonization of our operations which already supply markets in Asia and Australia,” Yara Pilbara's Laurent Trost said. The plant has been given pre-certification as result of the commitment to produce renewable ammonia from energy produced by on-site solar PV. The Yara plant is the first green ammonia project to receive the Council’s certification.

Yara has been granted NOK 283 million from Enova for the development of an initiative to produce green ammonia. With this Yara officially takes the first step towards full decarbonisation of the ammonia plant at Herøya in Porsgrunn. Yara’s fertilizer factory at Herøya is one of Norway's largest sources of CO2 emissions outside the oil and gas industry, releasing 800,000 tonnes of CO2 annually. A crucial element in fertilizer production is hydrogen, which is converted into ammonia. Today, the hydrogen is produced using liquefied fossil gas. By producing hydrogen based on renewable energy, Yara will be able to create emission-free ammonia.

- Norway has the unique opportunity to take a leading position in the green transition, but the window of opportunity is limited. That is why this decision is so important and will be able to help accelerate a new, Norwegian industrial adventure. Green ammonia is a versatile, climate friendly input factor and hydrogen energy carrier. Emission free ammonia is the key to reducing emissions from world food production and long-distance shipping, says Svein Tore Holsether, CEO of Yara.

Yara's corporate board has made the decision to invest in the 24 MW demonstration plant, where the technology will be demonstrated and quality assured. This plant will be one of the largest projects producing green ammonia in the world. Renewable energy will replace fossil fuels and thereby reduce CO2 emissions by approximately 41,000 tons per year. The plant will produce enough hydrogen to produce 20,500 tonnes of ammonia per year, which converts into between 60,000 and 80,000 tonnes of green fossil free mineral fertilizer.

- The project aims to supply the first green ammonia products to the market as early as mid-2023, both as fossil free fertilizer, as well as fuel for ships. This is an important move to ensure Yara’s plans to reduce it's own emissions, which already is cut by about 45 percent since 2005. We will continue to reduce the emissions by an additional 30 percent within 2030, and are very pleased that the authorities support the investment and has granted us the necessary permits and the financial support from Enova, says Holsether.

The funds/support from Enova are subject to ESA approval.

Friday June 18th Oskar Iveland presented his master's thesis

Ammonia Oxidation Based Reactions and their Catalysts

Oskar did his work over two years at UiO as a part of iCSI Industry Innovation Area 1: 21^st century ammonia oxidation and nitric acid technology development.

Professor Anja O. Sjåstad was his supervisor while PhD candidates Julie Hessevik and Asbjørn Slagtern Fjellvåg, as well as industry researcher David Waller at Yara have acted as co-supervisors.

Congratulation - and well done, Oskar!

As the fifth of the iCSI PhD candidates, Stine Lervold defended her thesis 09.06.2021.

The title of the thesis is

Investigations of the methanol to formaldehyde (MTF) reaction over silver

The work has been a part of iCSI Industrial Innovation Area 3: Frontier formalin technology development. Professor Hilde Johnsen Venvik has been Stine's supervisor, with Senior Research Scientist Rune Lødeng and Associate Professor Jia Yang from NTNU as co-supervisors.

The PhD defense was conducted with the opponents and public present digitally, while the supervisors, the administrator and a few of the candidate's colleagues, friends and family were present physically.

The committee:

First opponent: Professor Leon Lefferts, University of Twente, The Netherlands
Second opponent: Professor Hanna Härelind, Chalmers University of Technology, Sweden
Administrator: Professor (Head of Department of Chemical Engineering) Jens-Petter Andreassen, NTNU

The title of her public trial lecture was

Recent developments in catalyst properties and stability for the methanation of CO2

Congratulations, Dr. Stine!

iSCI gives a warm welcome to Björn Frederik Baumgarten, our new PhD who started April 1.

Björn did his bachelor at the Karlsruher Institute of Technology (KIT) with specialization in process development and scale-up. Then he did his master's 2015-2017 at NTNU, with the specialization in Environmental Catalysis and Biofuels, and the thesis “One-Pot Conversion of Biomass to Chemicals”.

Björn went back to Germany and worked for the University of Applied Forest Sciences Rottenburg in the biomass combustion group from 2018 to 2021. His focus there was reducing emissions from wood combustion

In his PhD project within Industrial Innovation Area 6, he will use an in-situ mass analyzer (ISMA).  With this instrument, the mass of catalysts can be measured during the reaction, thus enabling measurement of e.g. coke formation, adsorption and desorption, oxidation and reduction of the catalyst. With this data, a better theoretical understanding of many reactions is possible, which can lead to optimization of eg. reaction conditions or catalysts. Also, it can be used to measure adsorption and desorption phenomena in general.  

Associate Professor Jia Yang and Senior Research Scientist Rune Lødeng (SINTEF) will be Björns supervisors.