16-05-2025

hte strengthens cooperation with Mitsubishi Chemical

hte – the high throughput experimentation company signed a contract with Mitsubishi Chemical to provide research services for the screening of MMA oxidation catalysts. The research project included an accelerated ageing study, with the aim to qualify a catalyst with extended lifetime properties for the commercial operations. The study produced valuable results leading to an enhanced process profitability as well as to an extended unit utilization.

Using its proprietary 8-fold bench scale unit, hte successfully accelerated the performance screening of catalysts for the oxidation of pivotal platform molecules. This study was successfully conducted despite the main challenge posed by the feed prone to polymerize. A fast catalyst decay of different shaped materials was experimentally simulated using an automated feedback control loop, one of many hte’s proprietary software features, which facilitates the comparison of lifetime and catalyst performance. This research project centred on Mitsubishi Chemical’s oxidation catalyst provided a high R&D output and successfully complemented Mitsubishi Chemical’s R&D activities.

Dr. Yuki Kato, Chief Scientist of MMA Group, Monomers & Catalysts Laboratory at Mitsubishi Chemical comments, “High throughput screening is a powerful tool for accelerating the development of our industrial catalysts. Improvement of catalytic performances is a key for making the process competitive. To achieve our objective, utilization of hte’s equipment has brought us a lot of significant findings and outcomes. We believe our activities make us possible to strengthen our position as a global leading company for MMA production.”

“Japan has always been a land of inspiration and innovation and as such it is an important market for hte, a global solution provider for digitalized R&D lab workflows. We are pleased that we have earned through our performance the trust by Mitsubishi Chemical and developed a longstanding collaboration. We very much look forward to further strengthening our relationship in the future” says Markus Bold, CEO at hte.