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Summary: Catalysis, in the industrial production of chemicals, fuels, and materials, accounts for more than half of gross material production worldwide. Heterogeneous catalysis enables fast and selective chemical transformations, resulting in superior product yield and facilitating catalyst separation and recovery. The synthesis of novel catalysts has emerged as a hot topic for process and product development with numerous research publications and patents. Hence, development of efficient catalysts and their applications is important for sustainable energy production and use, green chemicals production and use, and economic growth. This Special Issue discusses recent developments related to catalysis for the production of sustainable fuels and chemicals and traverses many new frontiers of catalysis including synthesis, characterization, catalytic performances, reaction kinetics and modelling, as well as applications of catalysts for the production of biofuels, synthesis gas, and other green products. This covers the current state-of-the-art catalysis research applied to bioenergy, organic transformation, carbon-carbon and carbon-heteroatoms, reforming, hydrogenation, hydrodesulfurization, hydrodenitrogenation, hydrodemetalization, Fischer-Tropsch synthesis, to name a few. This book highlights new avenues in catalysis including catalyst preparation methods, analytical tools for catalyst characterization, and techno-economic assessment to enhance a chemical or biological transformation process using catalysts for a betterment of industry, academia and society.

Summary: This Special Issue on "New Trends in Catalysis for Sustainable CO2 Conversion", released in the Catalysts open access journal, shows new research about the development of catalysts and catalytic routes for CO2 valorization, in addition to the optimization of the reaction conditions for the process. This issue includes ten articles and three reviews about different innovative processes for CO2 conversion.Carbon capture and storage (CCS) is a physical process consisting of the separation the CO2 (emitted by industry and the combustion processes for energy generation) and its transportation to geological storage isolates it from the atmosphere in the long term. However, the most promising routes for CO2 mitigation are those pursuing its catalytic valorization. By applying specific catalysts and suitable operating conditions, CO2 molecules react with other components to form longer chains (i.e., hydrocarbons). Accordingly, effort should be made to catalytically valorize CO2 (alone or co-fed with syngas) as an alternative way of reducing greenhouse gas emissions and obtaining high-value fuels and chemicals. Carbon capture and utilization (CCU) is a developing field with significant demand for research in the following aspects:The development of new catalysts, catalytic routes, and technologies for CO2 conversion;The study of new processes for obtaining fuels and chemicals from CO2;Optimization of the catalysts and the reaction conditions for these processes;Further steps in advanced processes using CO2-rich feeds (H2+CO2 or CO2 mixed with syngas), increasing product yields.

Summary: Anaerobic digestion (AD) is one of the oldest biotechnological processes and originally referred to biomass degradation under anoxic conditions in both natural and engineered systems. It has been used for decades to treat various waste streams and to produce methane-rich biogas as an important energy carrier, and it has become a major player in electrical power production. AD is a popular, mature technology, and our knowledge about the influencing process parameters as well as about the diverse microbial communities involved in the process has increased dramatically over the last few decades. To avoid competition with food and feed production, the AD feedstock spectrum has constantly been extended to waste products either rich in recalcitrant lignocellulose or containing inhibitory substances such as ammonia, which requires application of various pre-treatments or specific management of the microbial resources. Extending the definition of AD, it can also convert gases rich in hydrogen and carbon dioxide into methane that can substitute natural gas, which opens new opportunities by a direct link to traditional petrochemistry. Furthermore, AD can be coupled with emerging biotechnological applications, such as microbial electrochemical technologies or the production of medium-chain fatty acids by anaerobic fermentation. Ultimately, because of the wide range of applications, AD is still a very vital field in science. This Special Issue highlights some key topics of this research field.