ITB Catalysis Symposium
A post meeting of First Indonesian-American KAVLI Frontiers of Science Symposium (KFoS)
The first ITB Catalysis Symposium was held on July 12, 2011 at ITB Campus in Bandung, Indonesia. This event is part of promoting the International Year of Chemistry 2011. The theme of the meeting was “Catalysis Development Towards Sustainable Chemical Processes”. This one day symposium presented 7 keynote lectures and 22 poster presentations. The symposium was organized by Inorganic and Physical Chemistry Research Division and successfully participated by more than 100 attendees over 4 countries (Japan, USA, Malaysia and Indonesia) discussing all aspects of catalysis such as novel catalyst preparation, catalysis on energy-related process and catalysis on specialty-fine chemicals.
Catalysts are known to be the chemical transformer in the industry. Approximately 80-90% of products of chemical industry are made in catalytic process. Prof. Tatsuya Okubo of The University of Tokyo opened the talk on how to prepare industrial zeolite catalysts via an economical process. Nowadays, zeolites have been the world most used catalyst in the industry contributing to 35% out of global catalyst market. The method excludes the use of organic compounds that are known to bring the cost high and give burden to the environment from its removal within the final process. This novel pathway certainly provides advantages for the commercialization of zeolites. Prof. Stephen A. Miller of University of Florida presented next generation of commodity plastics from plants instead of petroleum as biodegradable plastic for future eco-materials. An established olefin metathesis polymerization route has been extended to apply biorenewable feedstocks into polymers. Miller’s group called now the route as Carbon-Oxygen Metathesis (COMET) polymerization.
From Malaysia, two speakers of Ibnu Sina Institute at Universiti Teknologi Malaysia presented interesting and challenging topics in heterogeneous catalysis. Indonesian born Prof. Hadi Nur and Dr. Leny Yuliati gave talk on novel concept in catalysis (Phase Boundary Catlaysis) and water splitting photocatalysis for the production of hydrogen as fuel from water, respectively.
Two other speakers from USA, also participant of KFoS gave contribution in this event. They are Dr. Wendy Shaw of Pacific Northwest National Laboratory and Dr. Libai Huang of University of Notre Dame. From the local speaker, Dr. Rino R. Mukti presented development of hierarchically porous zeolites. Finally, we have chosen two best poster presenters and it was awarded to Dr. Hendrik O. Lintang of Ibnu Sina Institute, Malaysia and Dr. Yuni Krisnandi of Universitas Indonesia. ITB Catalysis Symposium is now proposed to be held annually and inviting more prominent speakers in the future. We acknowledge PT. Arfindo Bersinar and Pesona Scientific for the sponsorship.
We look forward to meeting you again next year in the same event.
