Catalytic Innovations

Catalytic Innovations, also known as CI, is a team of chemists and chemical engineers developing electrochemical solutions to reduce energy consumption in refining processes and for gas-to-liquid transformations. The company develops and scales up electrochemical and thermo-catalytic systems.

Catalytic Innovations has facilities in Rhode Island and Massachusetts. Catalytic Innovations has a laboratory bay, with access to fume hoods and a scanning electron microscope, at the Center for Innovation & Entrepreneurship in Fall River, MA. The company's facilities feature high-pressure reactors for CO₂ electrolysis and hydrogenation R&D, a potentiostat-galvanostat electrochemical test station, distillation systems, and gas chromatographs.

CI is fully equipped for high-pressure hydrogenation, electrochemical, and materials testing, and distillation contract R&D (ASTM D6352, D2887, D86).

At CI, fully integrated electrochemical and thermochemical reactors can be constructed on request. Catalytic Innovations licenses and sells patented anticorrosion technology from Yale University and has patent-pending methanol production systems that enable chemical feedstock production using carbon dioxide.

CI's electrolysis systems, enabled by the development of highly selective catalysts, simultaneously treat organic wastewater and generate renewable fuel. They oxidize contaminants in wastewater selectively, preventing anode dissolution and without changing the water itself - similar to the way a catalytic converter removes harmful contaminants in the air.

CI's method is additive-free, efficient, and employs selective catalysts on the surface of a stationary electrode. Proof-of-concept experiments for these reactions have been successful, prototypes have been built, and functioning lab-scale electrolyzer stacks are in use. The company's technology is enabled by recently discovered surface-bound molecular coatings, a new type of material that enables oxidation chemistry with minimal use of materials. Integrated into a polymer electrolyte membrane electrolyzer, these coatings are able to oxidize dilute organic contaminants. These materials are also useful as anti-corrosion coatings on anodes in the electrochemical industry.