Energy-producing industry, pollution control

The use of catalysts for exploiting renewable energy sources, producing clean fuels in refineries, and minimizing the by-product formation in industry also fall within the definition of environmental catalysis. In the future, the continuous effort to control transport emissions, improve indoor ah quality, and decontaminate polluted water and soil will further boost catalytic technology. All in all, catalysts will continue to be a valuable asset in the effort to protect human health, the natural environment, and the existence of life on Earth. 

Almost every chemical process includes many reaction steps. This means that the reactants will first produce intermediates, which will then be involved in further reactions leading to the final products. Frequently, the final products of the chemical process appear only after several hundreds or thousands of different reaction steps. The products may include those that are desired (e.g. yields of valuable chemicals or energy) and those that are unwanted, such as pollutants. If the stoichiometric equations and the rates of each reaction step are known, then the chemical process can in principle be controlled. In industrial applications this means that the composition of the reacting mixture and the conditions of the reaction process can be selected so that the process operates as efficiently as possible and has low environmental impact. Simulations of detailed reaction mechanisms can therefore be extremely useful within the design phase of new equipment or for the development and control of existing equipment. If a model is accurate and robust, and can be simulated efficiently, then it can be used in place of expensive experiments for process design. Within the book we have tried to address methods that can be used to assess and improve the robustness of kinetic mechanisms, as well as to reduce their impact on the simulation time of models of coupled chemical and physical processes. The aim of all of these methods is to improve the utility of kinetic mechanisms for a range of applications in the real world. 

In the new technology area, biofuels research constitutes one of the most challenging areas meant for the control of greenhouse gas emissions and the production of pollution-free energy (Zhou et al., 2008). The main source for tiie production of biofuel is agriculture-based wastes. Ethanol and biodiesel are the two main types of biofuels that may be produced in high volumes at an industrial scale. 

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