NaWuReT and YounGeCatS Joint Summer School – Shaping a Green Future by Reaction Engineering and Catalysis

Abstract

Sustainability has become one of the greatest scientific challenges of our time. Redesigning the chemical value chain with sustainable reactions and non‐fossil feedstocks, closing cycles in energy storage and digitalization demand interdisciplinary scientific excellence. The summer school organized by the early career researchers groups of Germanys reaction engineering and catalysis community aimed to bring together young scientists from reaction engineering and catalysis with experts from industry and academia to work on sustainable chemistry, energy storage and digitalization. During three days of lectures, workshops and intensive group work, the hot topics of our time were discussed and seminal ideas to tackle current challenges were formed.

Vision 2050: Reaction Engineering Roadmap

“…The report titled “Vision 2020: Reaction Engineering Roadmap,” published in 2001, “documents the results of a workshop focused on the research needs, technology barriers, and priorities of the chemical industry as they relate to reaction engineering viewed first by industrial use ... and then by technology segment...” Our objective in this perspective is to look back on the past two decades of progress in the field of reaction engineering and offer our perspective on the next two to three decades. We are not the first to editorialize on this and related topics, as many others have provided opinions and advice about the future of reaction engineering as a discipline, , its application to current and expected challenges, − and the future of the industries it serves Figure provides an outline of the body of this editorial commentary, which follows the Vision 2020 document structure except for the additional section on electrochemical systems.…”