These proceedings reflect the important role of catalysis in petroleum refining and the effects of factors such as environmental legislation on the industry. They also show the emergence of significant scientific expertise in the Middle East - the cradle of the oil industry. Participants from all over the world took part in the meeting and the book contains a well-balanced selection of articles from both academia and industry. Current trends in the oil industry focused attention mainly on heavy end hydrotreating, but other processes also gained their share of attention. An invaluable feature of the meeting was the two panel discussions where participants took the opportunity to obtain advance on many real and immediate problems.

Catalysis plays an increasingly critical role in modern petroleum refining and basic petrochemical industries as market demands for and specifications of petroleum and petrochemical products are continuously changing. As we enter the 21st century, new challenges for catalysis science and technology are anticipated in almost every field. Particularly, better utilization of petroleum resources and demands for cleaner transportation fuels are major items. It was against this background that the 2nd International Conference on Catalysts in Petroleum Refining and Petrochemical Industries was organized. The conference was attended by around 300 specialists in the catalysis field from both academia and industry from over 30 countries. It provided a forum for the exchange of ideas between scientists and engineers from the region with their counterparts from industrialized countries.The papers from the conference, which were carefully selected from around 100 submissions, were refereed in terms of scientific and technical content and format in accordance with internationally accepted standards. They comprise a mix of reviews providing an overview of selected areas, original fundamental research results, and industrial experiences.

After three meetings in Poitiers, France, the 4th International Symposium on Heterogeneous Catalysis and Fine Chemicals was held under the auspices of the New Swiss Chemical Society in Basel, Switzerland. Fundamental as well as applied contributions on the use of heterogeneous catalysis for the preparation of fine chemicals were presented and discussed.The program consisted of 4 plenary lectures, 28 oral contributions and around 90 posters covering a broad range of reactions and catalytic aspects. 82 of these contributions are collected in the present proceedings, grouped into the following 8 topical areas:- Industrial and engineering problems (7 contributions)- Alkylation and acylation reactions (11 contributions)- Enantio- and diastereoselective hydrogenation reactions (9 contributions)- Chemoselective hydrogenation reactions (12 contributions)- Oxidation reactions (14 contributions)- Immobilized and encapsulated complex catalysts (12 contributions)- Zeolite and clay catalysts (12 contributions)- Miscellaneous topics (5 contributions)

Many processes of the chemical industry are based upon heterogeneous catalysis. Two important items of these processes are the development of the catalyst itself and the design and optimization of the reactor. Both aspects would benefit from rigorous and accurate kinetic modeling, based upon information on the working catalyst gained from classical steady state experimentation, but also from studies using surface science techniques, from quantum chemical calculations providing more insight into possible reaction pathways and from transient experimentation dealing with reactions and reactors. This information is seldom combined into a kinetic model and into a quantitative description of the process. Generally the catalytic aspects are dealt with by chemists and by physicists, while the chemical engineers are called upon for mechanical aspects of the reactor design and its control. The symposium "Dynamics of Surfaces and Reaction Kinetics in Heterogeneous Catalysis" aims at illustrating a more global and concerted approach through a number of prestigious keynote lectures and severely screened oral and poster presentations.

Reaction Kinetics and the Development and Operation of Catalytic Processes is a trendsetter. The Keynote Lectures have been authored by top scientists and cover a broad range of topics like fundamental aspects of surface chemistry, in particular dynamics and spillover, the modeling of reaction mechanisms, with special focus on the importance of transient experimentation and the application of kinetics in reactor design. Fundamental and applied kinetic studies are well represented. More than half of these deal with transient kinetics, a new trend made possible by recent sophisticated experimental equipment and the awareness that transient experimentation provides more information and insight into the microphenomena occurring on the catalyst surface than steady state techniques. The trend is not limited to purely kinetic studies since the great majority of the papers dealing with reactors also focus on transients and even deliberate transient operation. It is to be expected that this trend will continue and amplify as the community becomes more aware of the predictive potential of fundamental kinetics when combined with detailed realistic modeling of the reactor operation.

The dramatic evolution of catalytic converters in the last thirty years was a result of a need worldwide to reduce pollution created by the exhaust gases of internal combustion engines. Environmental concerns have led American, Japanese and European Union (EU) legislation to pose continuously stricter emission limits for petrol engines in the last decades. The catalytic converter has become the most important means of exhaust treatment to achieve the desired emission limits. The international legislation has also created a need for a regular assessment of the efficiency of the catalytic converter in order to detect a deterioration of its conversion efficiency as soon as this deterioration takes place. The assessment of conversion efficiency of a catalytic converter can take place during normal driving of a vehicle (on-board diagnosis or OBD) or in a workshop by specialized technicians. The most important methods nowadays are the OBD methods. The evolution of methods concerned with OBD and non-OBD monitoring and diagnosing of efficiency of catalytic converters of internal combustion engines is described based on patents and published patent applications. Non-patent references are also used. The basic principles of modern catalytic converters are described in an extensive Introduction, where the importance of monitoring and diagnosing the efficiency of catalytic converters is demonstrated. The book is divided into four parts. The first part describes methods involving the use of oxygen or air/fuel exhaust gas sensors to determine the oxygen storage capacity of a catalytic converter. The second part describes methods involving the use of temperature sensors to determine the exothermic reaction capacity of a catalytic converter. The third part describes all other methods existing in patent literature that monitor and diagnose the efficiency of catalytic converters. The great majority of the methods of the third part involves exhaust gas concentration measurements. The fourth part comprises a general discussion of all methods described. In the beginning of each part, a short introduction is given to explain the problem that the methods attempt to solve. The methods in each part are presented in chronological order per patent applicant. This helps to evaluate how the patent applicant has improved his methods over time. A patent number index with information about the patent applicants, inventors, priorities and patent-families, an inventor index, a company index and a subject index can be found at the end of the book.

The topics covered in this book include a variety of adsorption and model reaction studies on clean and modified single crystal metal surfaces obtained by means of properly selected surface sensitive techniques. The accent is on the revelation of the physics and chemistry involved in the effects of various modifiers on the adsorptive and reactivity properties of the surface with respect to different reactants. In this book current information that contributes to the fundamental understanding of the effect of additives is summarized. Some of the additives act as promoters, others as poisons, in a number of important catalytic reactions. A description of single- and double-component systems has been obtained by using surface-sensitive techniques, particularly suited for this purpose. For the benefit of the reader, a short summary of the main surface science techniques has been given in Chapter 2. Three general and interrelated topics are reviewed. The first concerns the interaction of electronegative (Cl, S, Se, C, N, O, P) and electropositive (alkali metals) atoms with metal surfaces (Chapter 4). The second topic covers the chemisorptive properties of metal surfaces modified by varying amounts of additives with respect to different reactants (CO, NO, N2, O2, H2, CO2, NH3, H2O and hydrocarbons) (Chapters 5 and 6). In particular the adsorption kinetics and energetics, and the electronic, structural and reactive properties of the coadsorbate systems are considered, whereby particular attention is given to recent surface science studies with well-characterized, single crystal, metal surfaces. In these chapters, special attention is paid to showing the contribution of different factors (the nature and adsorption state of the modifier and the coadsorbed molecule, the structure of the adsorbed layer, the type of interactions in the mixed overlayers, etc.) to the modifier effects. In the discussion of the third topic, model studies of several important catalytic reactions (Fischer-Tropsch synthesis, ammonia synthesis, CO oxidation, water-gas shift synthesis) on modified metal surfaces (Chapter 8) are considered.The book will be particularly useful to scientists who are interested in adsorption phenomena, surface properties and catalysis. It should also prove invaluable to those addressing the questions of condensed matter (surfaces and interfaces), materials science (e.g. corrosion of metals) and electrochemistry.

This text examines the thermal and catalytic processes involved in the refining of petroleum including visbreaking, coking, pyrolysis, catalytic cracking, oligomerization, alkylation, hydrofining, hydroisomerization, hydrocracking, and catalytic reforming. It analyzes the thermodynamics, reaction mechanisms, and kinetics of each process, as well as

These proceedings reflect the extensive fundamental and applied research efforts that are currently being made on the conversion of gas, in particular on the direct conversion of methane. The Symposium in Oslo focused on the following topics: Direct conversion of methane, Fischer-Tropsch chemistry, methanol conversion and natural gas conversion processes. The main aim was to present the state-of-the-art and progress currently being made within each of these areas. The book contains the papers presented and includes plenary lectures, short communications and posters. The papers will be of interest to scientists and engineers working in the field of gas conversion, transportation fuels, primary petrochemicals and catalysis.