Mass Transfer Limitations: A Bottleneck for High Throughput Screening in Multiphase Catalysis

Abstract

The discovery of new catalysts has always been a subtle balance between the trail&error methodology, the structure-activity approach and serendipity (let’s call it intuition or luck...). Thus the sequential steps of catalyst discovery were catalyst preparation, catalyst testing, analysis of both the results of the catalytic test and of the catalyst structure, and knowledge upgrading (Scheme 1a). At this stage the catalyst under investigation could be selected. All the knowledge accumulated for years in catalyst selection has and is still used to help designing new and better catalysts. This structure-activity, structure-selectivity approach has proved very powerful in catalysis and a faster “knowledge feeding” would be useful. High throughput catalyst screening experiments are aimed to fulfil this requirement. Parallel (combinatorial) synthesis and testing of catalysts has been proposed as an efficient tool (Scheme 1b). Further comments and discussions about the combinatorial aspect of catalysis have been published [1, 2, 3].