Dr. Mestl is the head of the Department of Oxidation Catalysis at Clariant AG in Heufeld, Germany since 2006. In his career, he has developed numerous innovative technologies and catalysts, including a multi-layer catalyst system for phthalic anhydride production, the implementation of toroidal moving bed coating technology, and the exploitation of Artificial Neural Networks for tailoring catalyst packages to specific industrial processes. His contributions to the scientific community are recognized with multiple awards, such as the European Federation of Catalysis Societies Applied Catalysis Award (2017) and the North American Catalysis Society Kokes Award (2013).

Industrial catalysis is governed by only one fundamental “law of gravity”, and one “golden rule” derived thereof. This fundamental “law of gravity” of industrial catalysis is called The Economics: everything – catalyst, or process – which is not economic will never materialize (with the exception of air purification by legal force). The “golden rule” of catalysis additionally says that one must be able to repeatedly and reproducibly synthesize the same catalyst material again and again and again on all scales from laboratory, scale-up to finally each and every production lot.

In this lecture, examples of industrial catalyst manufacture and application will be used to explore whether this provocative question was asked rightfully. Or in contrast, whether the catalytic community, both industry and academia, still needs to push even harder and further to being able to understand which factors are all decisive for a repeatedly reproducible catalyst performance in a process reactor at a large-scale production site.

One catalyst example, which will be discussed, is the possibly simplest industrially produced partial oxidation catalyst. The second example, on the other hand, likely belongs to the most complex selective oxidation catalysts known. Both catalyst systems are investigated and optimized for at least 60 years. Still, the chosen examples will reveal many unanswered questions and will hopefully provoke a lively discussion. Finally, also the answer will be given to this provocative question in the title of the talk.