NEWS

A new CEN Workshop is being established to build upon the innovative outcomes of the European research project BIO-SUSHY (Bio-based Functional Coatings: Standardization of Application Guidelines, Performance evaluation and Safety Assessment for Sustainable Packaging). The project’s vision is to develop a sustainable and safe alternative to coatings made from per- and polyfluorinated alkyl substances for use across a variety of industries.

Two new CEN Technical Specifications now help to detect nano-objects in inorganic additives in food matrices and to assess aggregation and agglomeration in powders, aerosols, and suspensions. The documents have been developed under European Commission Mandate M/461.

The chemical sector is a pillar of the EU economy. According to the European Commission, it accounts for 7,5% of the EU manufacturing turnover, provides 1,2 million direct highly skilled jobs, and its sales amount to €565 billion (2018). As recently stated by Kerstin Jorna, Director General at DG GROW, the chemical industry is at "the beginning of everything", meaning that it is key to many other sectors for manufacturing their products.

Although good catalysts for nODH of alkanes have already been provided, there is still a need of additional ones with high catalytic conversion, activity and selectivity, and/or with a catalytic conversion. The selection of certain metals in combination with other elements, all of them stabilized with particular organic compounds and adsorbed on porous supports, gave rise to highly active catalytic surface areas that, in addition, not only are selective for propene selectivity in nODH, but also are highly stable and free from the main drawbacks of other catalysts for the same reaction (i.e. coke formation, by-side deactivating reactions, etc.).