Federal Ministry for Climate Action promotes UDE project Catalysts on textiles

Hardly anything works in the chemical industry without catalysts. The UDE Faculty of Chemistry and the German Textile Research Center North-West (DTNW) are investigating how their use could be optimized in the "OrgKatTex" project. The German Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Climate Action is funding the project with 501,000 euros; the UDE is receiving 229,000 euros of this.

Catalysts are used in about 90 percent of all chemical processes today to accelerate reactions or make them possible at all. These reactions are often carried out in a liquid, such as an organic solvent.

In university research, catalysts are usually used that are dissolved in the solvent (homogeneous catalysis). Companies, on the other hand, prefer catalysts fixed to surfaces (heterogeneous catalysis), which do not have to be separated from the product at great expense after the reaction.

In the "OrgKatTex" project, UDE and DTNW are focusing on so-called organocatalysts for two years. These include metal-free organic molecules of carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, nitrogen, sulfur and phosphorus. "We want to turn them into heterogeneous catalysts by attaching them to a solid base," says Professor Jochen Niemeyer. "To do this, we use textile fibers such as nylon, because they are inexpensive and robust."

The aim is to use these fiber-fixed organocatalysts in the synthesis of important chemicals, for example for pharmaceuticals. "In this way, we can combine the efficiency of organocatalysts with the easier handling of heterogeneous catalysts," Niemeyer explains. "This saves energy, avoids waste and has the potential to make pharmaceutical, fine chemical and biochemical products cheaper in the long term." Equal project partners of the UDE are DTNW researchers such as Dr. Klaus Opwis, who are working on the functionalization of textile fibers at the UDE's affiliated institute.

Source: Center for Nanointegration Duisburg-Essen (CENIDE)