Horizons in Sustainable Industrial Chemistry and Catalysis Volume 178

Horizons in Sustainable Industrial Chemistry and Catalysis, Volume 178 of the Studies in Surface Science and Catalysis series, aims at giving a comprehensive picture of recent developments in terms of sustainable industrial processes as well as the connected catalytic needs and opportunities to develop these novel routes. In fact, driven from competitiveness in a changing economic world with an increasing transition to renewable energy, chemical and refinery production are in a major transition phase to go beyond fossil fuels (as main raw materials and energy source) and to increase sustainability. It is thus necessary to rethink chemical and refinery production methodologies, with consequent need of new catalysis approaches. In fact, due to energy-chemistry nexus, and the changes in refinery associated to energy transition, there is the need to reconsider the actual (nearly exclusive) use of fossil resources for chemical production. In parallel, a change in the business model for chemical production is emerging: from the actual one (based on large plants and centralized production, with worldwide import of raw materials) to a distributed production model, based on the use of local resources (renewable energy and alternative C-sources). The challenge is to integrate the use of biomass sources for chemical production, which has largely dominated discussion in the last decade, to the use of C-sources alternative to fossil one (waste, CO2) in combination with the use of renewable sources of energy (electrified chemical production and beyond, such as artificial leaf).