Environmental Catalysis

The “Environmental Catalysis” section of the journal Catalysts publishes original and high-quality research communications, articles, and review articles on the topics of the catalytic elimination of gas, liquid, and solid-phase pollutants.

Responding to serious concern about the ongoing contamination of air, water, and soil by pollutants such as VOC, NOx, SOx, CO₂, CH₄, organic compounds, and soot emitted by industry and transportation, increasingly stringent regulations and policies are being introduced by governments around the world to decrease environmental outdoor pollution. Long-neglected compared to outdoor pollution, indoor pollution is now recognized as a major public health problem.

In order to meet the new standards of regulation but also to protect the environment and human health, two different strategies have been implemented. The first approach concerns cutting emissions through source reduction by improving process efficiency. The second strategy concerns intercepting emissions before their release using end-of-pipe technologies. Those after-treatment technologies consist of recovery and destructive processes, and catalytic processes are regarded as one of the most promising methods for pollutants removal from air or liquid media.

The “Environmental Catalysis” section aims to cover promising recent research in the field of the development of innovative catalytic materials from their syntheses (powdered or structured catalysts) to their application in model pollutants and in real mixtures of pollutants removal from (outdoor and indoor) air, water, and wastewater. Special attention is given to their durability and reusability, and to by-products formation in the catalytic process.

Fundamental studies for establishing structure-reactivity/selectivity relationships of catalysts (operando measurements) and for elucidating the kinetics of heterogeneous reactions are also expected to yield information about mechanisms and to optimize the reactor design and the catalytic process.

Advance knowledge of recent catalytic processes (photo-catalysis, plasma-catalysis, electro-catalysis, etc.) applied to environmental protection is also addressed, as well as an understanding of the key challenges to face to promote their application to full scale.