Proceedings of the Catalysis-by-Design workshops

In late 1988 and early 1989, the Energy Conversion and Utilization Technologies (ECUT) Division of the US Department of Energy (DOE) developed a program it called Catalysis-by-Design'' (CBD). This program is a collaborative effort between industry and ECUT to develop enabling technologies that will help industry to tailor-make catalysts for species applications. If successful, the program will serve DOE's dual missions of ensuring the nation's energy security and assisting US industry in maintaining and improving its competitive posture. Although DOE has recently completed a major reorganization of its Office of Conservation and Renewable Energy (where ECUT used to reside) and the ECUT Division no longer exists, this study still refers to ECUT because the industrial constituency that has evolved over time is familiar with ECUT name is supportive of the ECUT philosophy. Three workshops were held in the summer of 1989 to develop a research agenda for the CBD Program and to address the issue of how to structure a collaborative program between industry and government. This issue is very complex because of the differing needs of the two parties. That is, the extremely proprietary nature of industrial catalysis data requires some degree of secrecy, yet the traditional government obligation more » to disseminate information developed with federal funding requires the freedom to publish extensively in the scientific literature. In this series of workshops, participants were invited from industry, academia, government, and national laboratories to debate the issues and attempt to reach a consensus. As part of its ECUT systems analysis role, Pacific Northwest Laboratory organized the workshop for DOE. 2 refs., 8 tabs. « less