Milan, 1 March 2024 – MAIRE announces that NEXTCHEM (Sustainable Technology Solutions) and the Department of Energy of the Milan Polytechnic (POLIMI) have signed an exclusive five-year agreement to work together on research and development of innovative catalysts for energy transition and related advanced chemical reactor geometries. The project, coordinated by Prof. Isabella Nova, is the result of NEXTCHEM's goal of maintaining a leading role in the energy transition and sustainable chemistry. Ninety percent of chemical processes happen due to a catalyst i.e., a material that enables and accelerates chemical reactions. Developing and optimizing catalysts is, therefore, a strategic goal for implementing sustainable chemistry solutions.

The project involving MAIRE and the Laboratory of Catalysis and Catalytic Processes (LCCP) of the Department of Energy of the POLIMI includes the development of innovative chemical reactor solutions and associated catalytic process modeling, with the aim of achieving increasingly better results.  

For MAIRE – which has already been working in this area for years with numerous universities and research centers throughout Italy – this collaboration with the Department of Energy of the POLIMI is a further step toward achieving excellence in industry research. In addition, the project will enable the enhancement of the brightest researchers through cross-fertilization between universities and business, along the lines of the “Chemical Projects Engineering and Management” chair funded by MAIRE since 2017.

Alessandro Bernini, CEO of MAIRE commented:  "With this agreement MAIRE and the Department of Energy of the POLIMI strengthen the bond that began with the research on polypropylene that earned Giulio Natta the Nobel Prize in 1963. This is a confirmation of how the desire to partner industry and academia can lead to the development of new innovative solutions for the future."