AIM3CAT: Request for Industrial Partners to join the Industrial Advisory Board

Project description

Introduction

The transition towards circular feedstocks, electrified chemical processes and more sustainable production routes requires a new generation of heterogeneous catalysts and catalytic processes. Yet industrial catalyst development remains slow, costly and fragmented. Current workflows typically evaluate catalyst powders under idealized laboratory conditions to determine intrinsic kinetics, while catalyst formulation, shaping and reactor-scale transport phenomena are addressed only at later stages. As a result, critical interactions between these domains remain poorly captured across the development workflow, particularly at the interfaces that govern catalytic performance. This fragmented approach leads to higher scale-up risks, sub-optimal performance, and long, expensive innovation cycles. 

Goals

AIM3CAT aims to develop and validate a machine learning-driven digital framework that shifts catalyst development from a long, linear, iterative process into an integrated multi-scale approach. This will be achieved by coupling AI augmented fundamental modelling tools with agents in a multi-agent communication framework, enabling the co design and multi-objective optimization of catalyst materials, catalyst architectures, and reactor performance through bi-directional feedback. Two demonstrators (liquid-phase plastic depolymerization and gas-phase dry reforming) have been selected based on high-quality experimental and kinetic data, and access to pilot-scale validation equipment. These demonstrators cover emerging catalytic processes across diverse environments and transport regimes, enabling validation of the framework under industrially relevant conditions. This ensures robustness and transferability across a wide range of catalytic processes. 

Specifically, the project aims to: 

1. Define a holistic catalyst-reactor multiscale modelling framework enabling bi-directional cross-scale coupling, with detailed definitions of data input/outputs and selection of appropriate models.
2. Implement a materials-to-architecture interface coupling Bayesian-optimized catalyst screening and formulation with CFD-based in-silico architecture optimization, screening ≥100 catalyst–architecture variants and reducing experimental effort by ≥30%.
3. Implement an architecture-to-reactor interface coupling in-silico architecture performance to reactor-scale optimization via hybrid physics-ML models to enable bi-directional feedback, achieving ≥10x faster reactor simulations while maintaining accuracy within +-5% of detailed CFD models.
4. Validate the integrated framework at pilot scale in two demonstrators targeting ≥10–20% improvements in key process indicators.
5. Deliver a validated, transferable digital catalyst–reactor co-design framework for integrated performance prediction and identification of optimal configurations for industrial implementation and scale-up.

Request

To foster industry interaction, the project partners are seeking companies to join the Advisory Board for this cluster strategic basis research (cSBO) project.

More specifically, the project partners are searching for companies with expertise/interest in:

• Heterogeneous catalyst developers and manufacturers;
• Chemical and petrochemical companies;
• Polymer and plastics producers;
• Plastic recycling and waste-to-chemicals companies;
• Reactor and process equipment manufacturers;
• Engineering and process design companies;
• Modelling, simulation and digital technology providers;
• etc.

The primary role of companies during the pre-project phase is to tailor the project proposal to the actual needs of the companies and thereby maximize the likelihood of future utilization of the results. During the project execution, a two-way dialogue between the researchers and the user field involved remains essential to achieve the targeted knowledge transfer from scientific research to concrete applications.

The primary role of companies during the implementation phase is to:

• Align research with industrial needs, ensuring applicability, scalability, and market relevance;
• Validate solutions, enabling their translation into economically viable applications;
• Provide expertise, infrastructure, and use cases to accelerate deployment;
• Support concrete valorisation pathways, including pilots, business models, and market uptake.

During the cSBO project execution, companies may contribute as member of the Advisory Board. In addition, they may prefer to undertake parallel R&D activities (bilateral collaboration with (one of the) research groups, O&O-project, etc.) that are related to the subject of the SBO project at their own expense. In the latter option, the parallel R&D activities are not part of the SBO project. Companies may explore the possibility to obtain funding from the Agency for Innovation and Entrepreneurship.

The Advisory Board is open to all interested companies, including companies established outside the Flemish region.

Important notice: Companies that wish to be involved in this cSBO project, will need to be member of Catalisti. For more information on membership and membership fees, please contact Mathias Jacobs (mjacobscatalisti.be (mjacobs[at]catalisti[dot]be)) and Martijn Roosen (mroosencatalisti.be (mroosen[at]catalisti[dot]be)). In compliance with SBO regulations, the following requirements apply during the project implementation:

• All commercial members of the advisory committee are required to make a monetary contribution of minimum € 250/year in the case of an SME or minimum € 1,000/year in the case of a large enterprise or another organisation.

• A commitment to a substantive contribution from a content point of view and a time investment to participate in bilateral consultations with the project executors (upon request) and/or meetings of the advisory committee (at least 2x/year).

How to reply to this request

Please send an email before 15/06 to Mathias Jacobs (mjacobscatalisti.be (mjacobs[at]catalisti[dot]be)) and Martijn Roosen (mroosencatalisti.be (mroosen[at]catalisti[dot]be)) and briefly describe your interest and potential contribution to the project. After submission of your offer, you will be contacted for more information on the project contents, and a Letter of Intent and Questionnaire will be provided to join the Advisory Board of the project.