EuChemS Historical Landmarks Award

Un Premio Nobel per un grande Futuro | Conferenze @ Dipartimento “G. Natta”
Chairperson: Prof. Maurizio S. Galimberti
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PROCESSI

Giovanni Ricci | Scitec – CNR, Milano
Flavio Manenti | Politecnico di Milano
Paolo Vincenzi | LyondellBasell, Centro Ricerche G. Natta, Ferrara

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Stereospecific polymerisation of conjugated dienes: origins, developments and future prospects

Giovanni Ricci
Dr. Giovanni Ricci graduated in Chemistry at the University of Parma in 1982 and he earned his Ph.D. in Chemical Science in 1987. In 1984 he was hired as researcher at the Istituto di Chimica delle Macromolecole (ICM) of CNR (the Institute created by Giulio Natta), directed at that time by Prof. Lido Porri of the Milan Polytechnic, and began to deal with stereospecific polymerization of conjugated diolefins with transition metal and lanthanide catalysts, which still represents his main interest. His current position is Research Director at the same institute, nowadays called Istituto di Scienze e Tecnologie Chimiche “Giulio Natta” (SCITEC “G. Natta”).
In 2014 he was awarded with the Recognition at Innovation eni “Eni Award”, and in 2018 with the Tire Manufacturing Innovation of the Year_TTI Award. He is co-author of 130 papers in international journals, 40 international patents and several communications to international meetings.

Abstract:
The presentation intends to provide an overview on the stereospecific polymerization of conjugated dienes (i.e., butadiene, isoprene and substituted butadienes), from its origins in the 1950s at the Polytechnic of Milan to the present day, passing through the various developments that have concerned with the introduction of increasingly active and selective catalytic systems and the synthesis of new and more stereoregular polymeric structures.
Polybutadiene (cis-1,4 and syndiotactic 1,2) and cis-1,4 polyisoprene are currently the only polydienes industrially produced on a large scale: part of the lecture will therefore be dedicated to i) the description of the catalysts used for their synthesis; ii) their use, essentially for the production of elastomeric compounds for tires; iii) an overview on the worldwide major producers and users.
The final part of the presentation will focus on the future perspectives of the sector, mainly determined by the need for greater sustainability of industrial processes.

CO₂ as Feedstock Processes for (Post-)Transition Era

Flavio Manenti
He is Full Professor of Chemical Plants at Politecnico di Milano, CMIC Dept. “Giulio Natta”, where he is the Director of the Centre for Sustainable Process Engineering Research and Coordinator of the Master of Science Degree in Food Engineering.
He has served for two terms the European Federation of Chemical Engineering (EFCE) as elected Charity Trustee (2016-2019). Currently, he is the President of the Computer Aided Process Engineering (CAPE), EFCE’s Working Party (based in London, UK), for the second term and Member of the Executive Board of worldwide Process Systems Engineering community (based in Houston, US).
He has been nominated in 2023 by the Minister On. Pichetto Fratin as Member of the Bio-Fuel Committee for the Ministry of Energy and Environment (MASE) for 4 years mandate.
He is the coordinator of Double PhD and MSc bilateral agreement with Institutions from all continents. He published more than 350 papers indexed by Scopus along with a series of 5 books titled “… for the Chemical Engineer” edited by Wiley-VCH (Weinheim, Germany) on process digitalization and chemical engineering.
Research consultant for national and international companies on Process and Process Systems Engineering, H2 production and CO2 Utilization with 28 filed patents and 6 trademarks. 6 technologies have been scaled up to TRL 9 in 2019-2024, with 9-16kt/y operating plants. Other 6 patents are at the industrial implementation phase with turnaround of investment for 42M€ in the last 5y.
For his research activities, he received international recognitions such as the “Excellence in Simulation” Award (Los Angeles, USA), the “Zdenec Burianec Memorial” Award (Prague, CZ), the “Alexander von Humboldt” Senior Research Award (Berlin, GER) and the Mashelkar Golden Medal (New Delhi, IN).

Abstract:
The talk will illustrate existing and new trends for CO2 utilization to progressively tackle sustainability in process industry.

Industrial polymerization processes using Ziegler / Natta catalysts

Paolo Vincenzi
The professional experience of Paolo Vincenzi at Research Centre “Giulio Natta” in Ferrara started in 1988, just after Chemical Engineering graduation at the University of Bologna. He had the great opportunity to be part of the Research and Development team led by Ing. Gabriele Govoni, experiencing the advantages of timely and flexible organization at pilot plant facilities.
During first twelve years he contributed in different roles to the development of polymerization processes, like Spheripol, Catalloy, Spherilene, Aliphatic Poly-ketone, Spherizone, Polybutene-1.
The last twenty-four years have been dedicated to process development and industrialization of innovative to Z/N catalysts and their manufacturing technologies.
The focus of interest has consistently been on the improvement of production processes with the objective of obtaining products with competitive advantages.

Abstract:
An overview of polymerization processes is here presented, analysing the synergy among catalyst properties, polymerization technologies and final product.
The presentation deals with the heterogeneous catalysts, focussing the attention to their physical shape and structure, replicated in the polymeric growing particle. Moreover, a wider range of product performance is made available by continuous research on chemical composition.
The development of various type of reactors follows the objective to exploit the potentiality of available catalyst systems. On the other hand, the physical properties and the chemical composition of a catalyst system are designed to be suitable for a specific reaction technology, to allow the production of a defined family of polymeric materials. The evolution of polymerization technology is described with some specific examples, from the very beginning up to recent development.