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.

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 publikaction

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).

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!

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. 

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!

 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

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.

iSCI gives a warm welcome to Tina Bergh, our new postdoc who started April 6.

Tina has recently finalized her PhD work at Department of Physics, NTNU, where she focused on transmission electron microscopy (TEM) characterisation of Al-Fe(-Si) intermetallic phases in aluminium-steel joints. TEM techniques are versatile and allow assessment of the morphologies, crystal structures, and chemical compositions of thin specimens, with spatial resolution down to atomic scale.

As postdoc within Industrial Innovation Area 6, Tina will use various diffraction, imaging, and spectroscopy TEM techniques to contribute to better understanding of the structure and composition of the catalysts used in relation to several projects within iCSI. She will also work on development of methods crucial for TEM characterisation of these materials. 25% of Tina's time will be spent on projects at Department of Mechanical and Industrial Engineering. Hilde Johnsen Venvik will act as her iCSI supervisor.

As the fourth of the iCSI PhD candidates, Hongfei Ma defended his thesis 23.03.2021. The title of the thesis is

Kinetic Studies of Ethylene Oxychlorination to Ethylene Dichloride and Vinyl Chloride

The work has been a part of iCSI IIA4: PVC Value Chain: World class energy and raw material efficiency for the production of Chlorine and Vinyl Chloride Monomer (VCM). Professor De Chen has been Hongfei's supervisor, with Terje Fuglerud from Inovyn and Kumar Ranjan Rout from SINTEF as co-supervisors. 

The committee:
First opponent: Professor Tapio Salmi, Åbo Akademi University, Finland
Second opponent: Professor Xiang Feng, China University of Petroleum (Huadong), China
Administrator: Dr. Li He, NTNU

The title of his  public trial lecture was 
Catalysis in E-Hydrogen and Ammonia

Congratulations to Hongfei!

As the third of the iCSI PhD candidates, Endre Fenes defended his thesis 17.03.2021. The title of the thesis is

Ethylene Oxychlorination on CuCl₂ based Catalysts: Mechanism and Kinetics

The work has been a part of iCSI IIA4: PVC Value Chain: World class energy and raw material efficiency for the production of Chlorine and Vinyl Chloride Monomer (VCM). Professor De Chen has been Endre's supervisor, with Terje Fuglerud from Inovyn and Kumar Ranjan Rout from SINTEF as co-supervisors. 

The PhD defense was conducted with the opponents and public present digitally, and with only two supervisors, the administrator and the candidate's closest family present physically.

The committee:
First opponent: Professor Dmitry Yu. Murzin, Åbo Akademi, Finland
Second opponent: Professor Alessandra Beretta, Politecnico di Milano, Italy
Administrator: Professor Kristin Syverud, NTNU

The title of his  public trial lecture was 
Fixed bed vs fluidized bed reactors for highly exothermal reactions: Pros and cons 

Congratulations to Endre!

In a press release from Yara, Svein Tore Holsether, President and Chief Executive Officer of Yara says:

"I am pleased to announce we are taking further steps to enable the hydrogen economy, establishing a new global unit – Yara Clean Ammonia – to capture growth opportunities within carbon-free food solutions, shipping fuel and other clean ammonia applications, leveraging Yara’s unique existing positions within ammonia production, trade and shipping,”

The announcement came when Yara presented their fourth quarter 2020 results, which were improved compared to the same periode last year. 

PhD candidate Karoline Kvande from iCSI delivered a solid contribution to Chemistry Grand Prix at University of Oslo January 28. You can see her movie here. Great, Karoline!

We welcome Benedetta Oliani, who is doing an internship at Haldor Topsøe AS from February to July 2021. The title of her research project during her stay is Combined operando spectroscopy and temperature-programmed techniques for methane-to-methanol mechanism investigation. Benedetta is currently in the last year of her PhD studies in chemical and environmental engineering at the Department of Industrial Engineering, Università degli Studi di Padova. She also collaborates with Karoline Kvande at University of Oslo.

iCSI gives a warm welcome til the new PhD candidate Bjørn Gading Solemsli. He started at the Department of Chemistry at University of Oslo February 15 with professor Stian Svelle as supervisor. His Master Thesis A study of catalytic Pt nanoparticles inside a nano-porous functionalized UiO MOF-matrix for CO₂-Hydrogenation was finalized in 2020 the same place with professor Unni Olsbye as supervisor.

He will be continuing the work in IIA5 on zeotype catalysts for the methane-to-methanol (MTM) reaction. Direction conversion of methane (CH₄) to methanol (CH₃OH) at low temperatures has been a heavily investigated within the field of catalysis. This is due to the stability of the CH₄ molecule, making the utilization of it difficult and costly. The main method used today by industry is the steam reforming reaction to produce synthesis gas, which is then further converted to alcohols, ethers and olefins. By bypassing the synthesis gas route, on-site liquid separation of CH₃OH from natural gas is made possible, limiting the cost and the need for flaring. The working title on his project is A deeper fundamental understanding of direct CH activation.