In June, DPI co-organised the BlueSky-Incorep conference, a combination of the Blue Sky Conference on Catalytic Olefin Polymerisation and the International Conference on the Reaction Engineering of Polyolefins (INCOREP), enabling a forum where chemists, chemical engineers and material scientists could meet and discuss the various aspects of the field.
With over 170 participants from both industry and academia and sponsored by main polyolefin players and companies active in the field of catalysis, polymer characterisation and high throughput equipment. Several Industry Leaders gave their view on the needed polyolefin developments with respect to circularity and sustainability. The excellent lectures combined with the diverse and enthusiastic audience made the conference to a huge success. Especially as it built further on the prior experience of both conferences.
The scientific programme, from Monday 12 June until Friday 16 June, focused on the latest achievements in molecular and heterogeneous olefin polymerisation catalysis (covering catalyst design, precatalyst activation and speciation, molecular kinetics, and polymer microstructure and architecture), as well as progress in reactor and process design for various technologies (including highly innovative and/or unconventional ones). The conference also covered other important topics like High Throughput Experimentation, advanced fast analytics, big data generation and Artificial Intelligence (AI) aided modelling.
