Page 8 - Principles of Catalyst Development
P. 8
PREFACE TO THE SERIES
Catalysis is important academically and industrially. It plays an essential
role in the manufacture of a wide range of products, from gasoline and
plastics to fertilizers and herbicides, which would otherwise be unobtainable
or prohibitively expensive. There are few chemical- or oil-based material
items in modern society that do not depend in some way on a catalytic
stage in their manufacture. Apart from manufacturing processes catalysis
is finding other important and ever increasing uses; for example, successful
applications of catalysis in the control of pollution and its use in environ-
mental control are certain to increase in the future.
The commercial importance of catalysis and the diverse intellectual
challenges of catalytic phenomena have stimulated study by a broad spec-
trum of scientists, including chemists, physicists, chemical engineers, and
materials scientists. Increasing research activity over the years has brought
deeper levels of understanding, and these have been associated with a
continually growing amount of published material. As recently as sixty years
ago, Rideal and Taylor could still treat the subject comprehensively in a
single volume, but by the 1950s Emmett required six volumes, and now no
conventional multivolume text can cover the whole of catalysis in any depth.
In view of this situation, we felt there was a need for a collection of
monographs, each one of which would deal at an advanced level with a
selected topic so as to build a catalysis reference library. This is the aim of
the present series, Fundamental and Applied Catalysis.
These books in the series will deal with particular techniques used in
the study of catalysts and catalysis; these will cover the scientific basis of
the technique, details of its practical applications, and examples of its usefulness.
The volumes concerned with an industrial process or a class of catalysts
will provide information on the fundamental science of the topic, the use of
the process or catalysts, and engineering aspects. For example, the inaugural
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