Gerhard Mestl
Gerhard Mestl, leading researcher in the field of oxidation catalysis at Clariant has been selected as the recipient of the 2017 EFCATS Applied Catalysis Award
We are pleased to announce that Dr. Gerhard Mestl of Clariant AG is the recipient of the 2017 EFCATS Catalysis Award, sponsored by BP and administered by the European Federation of Catalysis Societies. The Award will be presented at EuropaCat XIII (Florence, August 2017).
This Award recognizes and encourages individual contributions, which demonstrate excellence, scientific novelty, technical achievements in development and scale-up, interdisciplinary teamwork between scientists and engineers and clearly show emphasis on actual or potential commercial application.
Dr. Mestl is being specifically recognized for his seminal achievements in the field of selective oxidation. Bringing the phthalic anhydride business technically to success, Gerhard continued to establish and to extend especially the coating technology to other applied catalyst systems like noble metal systems for the next generation vinyl acetate monomer synthesis and managed a step change in the BiMo-based propene to acrolein process. Besides this Gerhard introduced highly innovative new versions for VPO-based maleic anhydride catalysts and contributed significantly to the versatile technology platform of MoNbVTe mixed oxides. These mixed oxides are used in the field of one-step propane to acrylic acid conversion or the highly selective oxidative dehydrogenation of ethane-to-ethene.