The Agencia Estatal Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas (CSIC) is the largest public multidisciplinary research organisation in Spain and the third largest Europe’s research organization. It has a staff of more than 13,500 employees, and trains more than 4,000 pre- and post-doctoral young researchers. The CSIC has 123 research institutes distributed throughout Spain and holds a delegation in Brussels.
The Instituto de Tecnologia Química (ITQ), Chemical Technology Institute, is a Joint Research Centre founded in 1990 by the CSIC and the Polytechnic University of Valencia (Universitat Politècnica de València, UPV). It is a worldwide recognized research centre, accredited as Spanish Excellence Research Centre, which hosts 33 staff scientists alongside more than 75 PhD and postdoctoral researchers and 20 lab technicians. Research activities integrate the fields of catalysis and materials science through a multidisciplinary approach. Its staff conforms a highly qualified and multidisciplinary team of specialists in the design, synthesis, and development of innovative catalyst materials for chemical reactions of industrial interest, with particular focus on processes related to the production of energy vectors and platform chemicals. These research activities generate ca. 130/year scientific publications in high-impact international journals and bring the institute among the leading European public research centres in terms of technology transfer activities in the field of catalysis, with e.g. 123 patents generated in the period 2005-2015, 32 of which have been licensed/transferred to industry.
In IDEALFUEL, CSIC is in charge of coordinating a task that targets the development of catalysts and processes for the upgrading of lignin-oils to HFO-like bunker-biofuels and their pilot demonstration. Major tasks will be to develop solid hydrotreating catalysts with active phases displaying remarkable activity at mild conditions and extended lifetimes. The lab-scale catalytic testing and analytics facilities the institute avails of will be deployed to identify optimal formulation, nano-structure and operation conditions for hydrotreating catalysts to achieve an upgraded liquid product meeting HFO specifications. Catalyst formulation is going to be upscaled for piloting activities.
Website: www.itq.upv-csic.es/en
Country: Spain
