Editorial

Welcome to the second ROMEO newsletter.

ROMEO revolves around a new reactor concept that utilises membranes in order to carry out chemical synthesis and processing in a single step- something of a 2-in-1 reactor, in which the product is continuously removed from the reaction mixture as soon as it is formed. The aim of ROMEO is to reduce energy consumption and emissions in industrial catalytic gas-phase reactions.

Part of the ROMEO people have been busy working on membrane development while others focused on immobilising and characterising catalytic systems on membranes. They'll now move on to performance tests and optimisation. As for SILP membrane systems, feasibility tests are on the agenda. And of course we are busy working on our novel reactor design, though little can be disclosed at this stage.

One goal of the bi-annual newsletter is to introduce the people behind the ROMEO project. In this issue, you can find out more about:

• Raquel, Researcher at ICP-CSIC (Spain) - Raquel has experience in industrial emissions and air pollution control by catalysis, photocatalysis and adsorption.

• Björn, Expert for Hydrogen and Synthesis gas (or syngas) plants, LINDE AG (Germany) – Björn is a member of LINDE’s steam reformer pilot plant project team, where he is responsible for analytics and plant operation.

• Alexander and Patrick, two PhD candidates from the Friedrich-Alexander University (Germany). Alexander is mainly working on continuous gas phase hydroformylation reaction and Patrick is working in the field of catalyst imobilisation and new reactor concepts related to the water gas-shift reaction.

Please feel free to contact us via our website (www.romeo-h2020.eu) should you have any questions or comments.

Enjoy your reading!

Prof. Robert FRANKE, Project Coordinator

ROMEO attended 2 meetings in Brussels

In April, ROMEO representatives attended two high profile events in Brussels.

Impact Workshop for the Sustainable Process Industry Public-Private Partnership Projects (21, 22 April) – The aim of this workshop was twofold: (i) to present the results of EU funded research and innovation projects in the field of the Sustainable Process Industry Public-Public Private Partnership (SPIRE cPPP) and (ii) to identify the ways to maximize the benefits of project clusters.

Workshop on Membrane Reactors: Save the date!

On 9 and 10 March 2017, the Third European Workshop on Membrane Reactors will be held in Italy. The first workshop was organised back in November 2012 (Italy) and was entitled “Pd-based membranes and reactor scale-up”. The second workshop, “Catalytic Membrane Reactors: what’s next” was held in April 2015 in the Netherlands. More information on these two events is available from the CARENA website.

This third one is jointly organised by ROMEO, MEMERE, Fluidcell, Bionico, and Ferret, 5 major European projects on membrane reactors.

During these two days, there will be presentations on fundamental membrane-related science, process design and applications, industrial applications. There will also be a poster session and a company visit.

More information will be provided on our website so watch that space and save the date for what promises to be a very fruitful workshop!

Just like ROMEO, MEMERE is a EU Horizon 2020 - SPIRE-05-2015 project. Bionico is a EU Horizon 2020 Research and Innovation Programme Hydrogen Europe and N.ERGHY. Fluidcell and Ferret are projects supported by the European Union’s Seventh Framework Programme for the Fuel Cells and Hydrogen Joint Technology Initiative.

Second progress meeting in Copenhagen

On 21 and 22 September, the 2^nd ROMEO progress meeting, jointly organised by DTU and LiqTech, was held in Copenhagen. This meeting not only allowed to keep everyone up to date with what all partners are doing, but was also a good opportunity to plan the next actions.

Dr Frank Stenger, Scientific Coordinator, underlined that we had a lot to do in the coming six months. At the same time, he acknowledged that a lot had been done since the 1^st progress meeting in Aachen!

Throughout the two days, the presentations generated lots of discussions that carried on during the breaks and even the meeting diner. This reflected perfectly the opening words from Frank: “there shouldn’t be anything that can’t be discussed”!

Read the full article here.

Focus on Raquel Portela

Raquel is a Researcher at ICP-CSIC, Spain

"ROMEO focuses on the intensification of hydroformylation, model process with undesired consecutive reactions, and the water gas shift reaction, representative of equilibrium-driven processes, but the final aim is to develop a tool that helps identify the applicability of the ROMEO concept to all kind of reactions susceptible of intensification."

Read the full interview here.

Focus on Björn Schichtel

Björn is an expert for Hydrogen and Synthesis gas (or syngas) plants at LINDE AG, Germany

"The benefit of integration of two process steps (reaction and integration) into one process step will be huge regarding energy savings (reducing of CO2 emissions) as well as reduction of CAPEX costs for new plants (reduction of downstream process units) for the chemical industry."

Read the full interview here.

Focus on Patrick Wolf

Patrick is a PhD candidate at Friedrich-Alexander University, Germany

"Being a researcher doesn’t only guarantee exciting new fields of work but also the chance to work on international projects."

Read the full interview here.

Focus on Alexander Weiss

Alexander is a PhD candidate at Friedrich-Alexander University, Germany

"Besides working and connecting with so many different people, the most exciting part in ROMEO for me is to work on a completely new concept to establish SILP technology in a broader industrial way. The concept is very promising and it would be a great deal if we could achieve these goals."

Read the full interview here.