Cardiff sets gold standard for catalysis research

This is one of the anticipated outcomes of research being conducted at Cardiff University’s School of Chemistry, where researchers including Dr Philip Davies, a senior lecturer in physical chemistry, are looking at new ways to exploit the properties of the noble metal at the nanoscale.

Their work stems from research carried out by Prof Graham Hutchings, FRS and director of the Cardiff Catalysis Institute (CCI) at the University, who predicted that gold would be the best catalyst for hydrochlorination of ethyne to make vinyl chloride, which is the precursor to poly-vinyl chloride (PVC).

Dr Davies said: ‘The present catalyst that’s used is mercury-based, which obviously is very environmentally bad. It’s also relatively short lived as a catalyst.

‘Hutchings was looking for an alternative and he predicted, based on thermodynamics, that gold would be the best. He subsequently proved that.

‘Afterwards, he started looking at gold as a catalyst for all sorts of processes. For example, it’s a selective catalyst for the hydrogenation of crotonaldehyde. It’s also a very good selective oxidation catalyst.’