Haldor Topsoe, the world's largest producer of catalysts
Creating a greener world through catalysis
It started with catalysts used to produce fertilizers. Now, 70 years later, the world-wide Danish company Haldor Topsoe is also making the world greener in other ways, producing catalysts that clean up pollutants in the refinery and power industry. In Chemrecs BioDME project Haldor’s copper based catalyst transforms the syngas into dimethyl ether. What is a catalyst and how does it work?
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In the foreground of the company stands the founder Haldor Topsoe himself. At an age of 97 he is still active in the office in Lyngby every day, radiating an air of belief in the future. From the very start, 70 years ago, Mr Topsoe’s idea was to make a difference in the everyday life of people, also in the developing world.
“Business has no meaning in itself, unless it makes life better for people and for the poor countries.”
Mr Haldor Topsoe
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The company is world-famous for its very first products, catalysts for sulphuric acid and later on ammonia, above all used to produce fertilizers. Today those products are still big, but the focus for the future is different, alternative fuels and energy sources playing the most important roles. And with this Haldor Topsoe will surely keep making a difference in the everyday life of people for a long, long time.
A catalysed clean environment
Haldor Topsoe today offers 125 different catalytic processes in 13 different fields.
> See Haldor Topsoe’s 13 fields of catalysts
The largest area is the refinery industry, where Haldor Topsoe’s catalytic process removes sulphur and other pollutants in the refining of crude oil to diesel and other products. Another big area is removing sulphur and nitrogen oxide (NOX) from flue gases in power plants. Haldor Topsoe has also developed a catalyst to put on the exhaust system of heavy duty vehicles to reduce NOX. The last decade the development of catalysts has focussed very much on environmental concerns. The BioDME project in cooperation with Chemrec is Haldor Topsoe’s most recent project with an environmental focus.
What is a catalyst?
A catalyst is a substance used to speed up a chemical reaction without being consumed itself. The substances used to make catalysts are complex and diverse, but just to mention some it could be acids, metals or oxides. In the case of DME the catalyst is based on copper.
 | | The manufactured catalysts in most cases come in the form of pellets. They have different shapes and are usually 4-6 mm long. A large amount of pellets is poured into a tube through which gas can pass. The tube, which in a full scale process is up to 8 meters long, is inserted into a reactor. When you pass the gas over the catalyst the reaction takes place. Without the catalyst the reaction would either not occur or go much slower.
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In the catalytic process one chemical is transformed into another. Exactly what happens inside the reactor when the reactants meet the catalyst is still a challenge to the advanced researchers at Haldor Topsoe. But the end result is clear. 90 % of all the chemical processes in the world are based on catalysis. 60 % of all industrial products are produced using catalytic processes. But to develop a good catalyst takes a lot of knowledge as well as trial and error.
No catalytic recipe book available
– There is of course no recipe book on how to make a good catalyst, says Mr Henrik Udesen, General Manager at the division for Corporate Planning and New Business development at Haldor Topsoe. But we have a lot of experience by now and our scientists know the likely reactions of different catalysts. The greatest challenge though is the manufacturing, the scale-up.
When scaling-up the reactions may look different from in the laboratory. To know what happens in the reaction is one thing, to be able to explain why is another. Haldor Topsoe invests 15% of its turnover in R&D. | |  |
– It is in manufacturing that we distinguish ourselves, says Mr Udesen. We have a very efficient, secret production method. And we have built up a large knowledge bank over the years, in order to produce good, stable catalysts. We want to be able to answer not only the question “what” but also “why”.
A good catalyst is stable and selective
– First of all a good catalyst is stable, continues Udesen. That means it has a sustainable lifetime, which makes it economical. Secondly it is selective and produces only one product. Otherwise a lot of clean up, through other chemical reactions or separations, must be done, which is uneconomical.
DME in the lawn mower
Haldor Topsoe has a long history with DME. Back in the 70’s DME was just an intermediary step in the catalytic process called TIGAS used to make a specialty gasoline. One day one of the scientists said “Let us try to use this funny thing”, and poured the DME into his lawn mower. It worked!
– We became very enthusiastic about it, because it was a gas that originated from natural gas and not fossil oil, says Mr Udesen. A lot of attention was brought to it, we made tests around the world, and it turned out well. Our production process was a very economical one.
Now 40 years later the world knows that DME is an excellent substitute for diesel. In China buses run on DME, it is also used as a cooking gas in households. The BioDME demonstration project in Piteå is the first attempt in the world to produce DME from biomass.
Proud participator in the BioDME project
– We are very happy we are participants in the BioDME project, says Mr Udesen. What Chemrec has done in Piteå is admirable; they have showed that they can produce the syngas from the black liquor. And now the first drops of DME will soon be a reality. We are already discussing with Chemrec how we can take part when taking the project further, as soon as the demonstration project has proven successful.
Haldor Topsoe has a long and successful track record of several conversion technologies with syngas as the raw material, apart from DME, for example ammonia, methanol and hydrogen. The syngas then comes from other sources but is exactly the same as when produced from black liquor.
Other biomass-to-fuel projects in the world
Haldor Topsoe is taking part in many different projects around the world where alternative fuels are being produced through catalysis. In Des Plaines, Illinois, a demonstration project is running where wood pellets are gasified and turned into biofuel via Haldor Topsoes process TIGAS (Topsoe Integrated Gasoline Synthesis). This is a project in cooperation with GTI, Carbona, Conoco Phillips and UPM-Kymmene. It is partly financed by the American Department of Energy (DOE). Another project is the EuroBioRef (European multilevel integrated biorefinery design for sustainable biomass processing) which aims to uncover the entire process in the transformation of biomass from field to fuel and from plants to plastic.
– All these projects point towards the future, says Mr Udesen. Now everybody is driving cars on petrol or diesel. In the future the fuels will be more diversified. We must be prepared for that challenge and not ride on one horse only. Our challenge is to develop new ways, economical and feasible, to make non-fossil fuels as well as new energy resources, like fuel cells.