Unique nano-sized materials provide significant end-use performance enhancement with commercially viable economics

Catalysts – Tools for Productivity and Environmental Improvement
Catalysts are used in the manufacture of approximately $10 trillion in goods and materials each year, including energy, chemicals, pharmaceuticals and plastics. They are used to improve our environment, automobiles and industrial exhaust gas cleaning, and soil/groundwater remediation. Until recently, catalysts have generally been developed using inefficient trial-and-error methods.

Nanocatalysts – Next Generation Catalysts
Headwaters Technology Innovation Group has now introduced NxCat Next Generation Nanocatalyst Technology™, which has set a new paradigm in catalysis. NxCat™ technology, allows catalysts to be designed and engineered at the atomic scale, creating a new definition of “nanocatalyst”. The “nano” in nanocatalysts refers to very small particles. For example, approximately 200 billion nanometer-sized particles (nanoparticles) could fit on the period at the end of this sentence. While others have typically applied the “nano” label to objects less than 100 nanometers (nm), NxCat technology truly operates at the nanoscale, controlling the structure and function of catalyst particles less than 10 nm in size.

Control of Catalyst Structure at the Nanoscale
NxCat technology provides a method to control the structure of catalyst particles, thereby controlling their catalytic function. NxCat™ catalysts have:




NxCat Technology Provides Superior Performance
With the current hype over nanotechnology, it can sometimes be unclear how much value actually comes from “nano”. But the nanoscale control of catalyst structure developed by Headwaters goes right to the “bottom line”, delivering:
1. Higher activity ˜ Less catalyst usage. Greater raw material utilization.
2. Higher selectivity ˜ Little or no byproducts and waste.
3. Longer life ˜ Reduced catalyst cost. Reduced downtime.




Nanomaterials
Headwaters Technology Innovation Group is the developer of the innovative NxCat Next Generation nanocatalyst Technology; a new approach to producing high performance, cost efficient catalysts. In a further breakthrough, Headwaters Technology Innovation Group has now applied its proprietary NxCat technology to the production of nanoparticles and nanomaterials.

Using NxCat’s adaptable technology, Headwaters Technology Innovation Group has developed a chemical method to tightly control particle formation in producing nanoparticles of metals, alloys, and metal oxides < 10nm with a remarkably narrow particle size distribution and homogenous composition. Two examples of these materials can be seen in Picture 1 Mg(OH)2 (flame retardants in plastics) and Picture 2 TiO2 (cosmetics, sunscreens, and coatings). These novel materials are expected to bring value to other consumer products and industrial applications, such as, antimicrobial and protective coatings, photocatalytic self-cleaning surfaces, CMP polishing agents, chemical catalysts and additives, environmental control, electronics, and a variety of other markets.

Carbon nanoshells, Picture 3, are a new carbon based nanomaterial with unique chemical and mechanical properties. It has been developed and has potential to be used in a wide range of applications such as catalyst support, electrode material in Li-batteries and fuel cells, conductivity and color modifier in plastics, polymers, and hydrogen storage. Evaluation of this material is underway by market leaders in the respective areas.


Pharmaceutical Catalysts
NxCat™ technology controls the structure and composition of catalysts down to the atomic scale, optimizing catalytic performance for specific applications, and provides highly selective and stable catalysts for the chemical industry.

Headwaters Technology Innovation Group has applied this groundbreaking technology to critical problems in the pharmaceutical industry. In a regulatory environment of ever increasing stringency, extremely high selectivity is required during production of pharmaceutical ingredients to maximize purity levels. To achieve the required selectivity, industry has to date relied heavily on homogeneous catalysts. These organometallic complexes are by definition soluble in the reaction medium, and thus difficult to remove from liquid reaction products. This creates significant product contamination and catalyst cost issues. The pharmaceutical industry has sought to immobilize homogeneous catalysts by attaching them to solid support materials, so that they can be easily removed from reaction products and reused. At the same time, the immobilized catalyst must maintain the expected catalytic performance.

NxCat technology offers unique methods to meet this industry challenge. Using proprietary anchoring methods, Headwaters Technology Innovation Group is developing stable, reusable immobilized catalysts that are expected to significantly reduce product contamination, simplify manufacturing and lower overall catalyst cost. By preserving catalyst selectivity and maximizing product purity, NxCat technology will address key regulatory requirements by producing pharmaceutical ingredients that are free of unwanted or potentially harmful by-products.


Reforming Catalysts
In petroleum refineries, catalytic reforming is one of the most commonly used processes. During reforming the octane number of naphtha, a raw mixture of hydrocarbons, is increased b dehydrogenation, isomerization, dehydrocycliczation and hydrocracking reactions to make it suitable for gasoline blending and manufacturing of other petrochemical materials. Worldwide, naphtha is processed at a rate of 13 million barrels per day, and reformed naphtha constitutes about 30-35% of the total gasoline pool.

Current reforming catalysts are all platinum (Pt) based, and are usually found in bimetallic formulations with either tin (Sn) or rhenium (Re). The quality of the final naphtha product is very sensitive to catalyst structure since several different chemical reactions occur at distinct catalytically active sites. Using NxCat’s adaptable technology, Headwaters Technology Innovation Group has created a unique competitive advantage by designing a reforming catalyst with superior control of the size, composition and morphology of the nanoparticles. This maximizes the yield of the desired products, increases the lifetime of the catalyst, while limiting unfavorable reactions such as hydrogenolysis and coking.

In order to enable fast and efficient catalyst screening, Headwaters Technology Innovation Group has designed and constructed two in-house reforming reactors. In March 2005, it reported results from an independent side-by-side laboratory comparison which showed that its naphtha reforming catalyst produced better octane rating results, than one of the petroleum industry’s leading catalysts. The end result would be the equivalent of a refinery upgrading from regular-grade gasoline to premium-grade gasoline, by simply changing the catalyst. An additional benefit was the significant increase in the amount of hydrogen produced, which is extensively used in other refinery processes.