Preparation of Industrial Catalysts

Catalysts are used in all important industrial reactions and particularly in refining and petrochemistry. By definition a catalyst is a product which allows to accelerate a chemical reaction, and remains unchanged during this reaction. It plays a role on the kinetic of the reaction, decreasing the activation energy by creation of several energetical intermediate states. Catalysts can be homogeneous: solved in a liquid phase, or heterogeneous usually in the solid state. These heterogeneous catalysts are either bulk catalysts, only made up by active species, or supported catalysts, in which the active species are dispersed on a preliminary shaped support. In this paper we will focus on the heterogeneous supported catalysts, which present the advantages to use less active species especially when this species is expensive, to obtain a better dispersion of this latter on the support and to take advantage of the textural properties of the support.