Evonik Industries and the Leibniz Institute for Catalysis (LIKAT) are planning to expand their cooperation in the area of catalysis research for the long term. The Institute has been successfully working with Evonik in the field of catalysis for more than ten years and the parties recently agreed to extend their long-term cooperation.

For this purpose, the Advanced Intermediates Business Unit of Evonik has set up a new laboratory in the LIKAT facility, which will be dedicated to the development of new catalysts and the optimization of existing production processes. Evonik agreed to make a large investment available for this purpose in a framework agreement.

"Our cooperation has generated a large number of innovations and patents over the past years," Prof. Dr. Stefan Buchholz said, head of Innovation Management of the Evonik Advanced Intermediates Business Unit. "We plan to follow up on this success by bringing additional catalysis research products to commercial maturity in the years to come."

Catalysis is considered one of the most significant levers of efficient chemical production and is a key technology of the 21st century. It helps save energy and resources and reduces byproducts and waste in chemical production. The Advanced Intermediates Business Unit uses the catalysts for the production of plasticizers in its integrated C4 technology platform in the Marl Chemical Park.

LIKAT, the largest European research institute in the area of applied catalysis, is an internationally leading institute for the research and development of homogeneous and heterogeneous catalysts as well as catalytic processes and technologies. The main focus of its scientific work is on gaining new insights in basic catalysis research and studying their application to technical concepts.