SNBL workshop on high gas pressure experiments


The Swiss-Norwegian beamline, in collaboration with our Dutch-Belgian colleagues from DUBBLE, organized a 2-day worshop
at the ESRF on 8 and 9 November 2007 on the theme of "High gas pressure experiments". A total of 20 external participants and
10 members of the SNBL and DUBBLE teams attended the Workshop and joined in the evening reception and dinner held at the ESRF.
The external participants came in roughly equal numbers from Norway, Switzerland and the Netherlands, together with some additional
invited speakers from the United Kingdom and France.

The main themes of the Workshop included the present status and progress in the field of in-situ catalysis experiments, and the current
activities in solid-state hydrogen storage research. Both of these subject areas have become the subject of intensive research and
development over the last few years, and currently contribute to roughly 50% of the total activities at SNBL.
These developments have been driven by the very successful work of the ETHZ groups in Technical Chemistry and the recent Catalysis
Initiative led by teams from the Universities of Oslo and Trondheim. In addition, catalysis is a supported strongly in the Netherlands
(for example in the University of Utrecht and at the Energy Center of the Netherlands, Petten). Another major area of activity at SNBL
concerns energy storage techniques, and in particular solid state hydrogen storage. Several presentations described both the current
activities in this field, and the targets for future research. Another research area which was covered during this workshop concerns the use
of metal-organic-framework structures (MOFs), which has recently resulted in several very high profile publications from SNBL.
Interestingly, MOFs can find application both as catalysts and as hydrogen storage materials. In all of these activities, the extension of
the current capabilities of SNBL toward experiments under much higher gas pressures is of great topical interest.

The various fields of research which require high gas pressures are moving forward rapidly at SNBL. The in-house team has recognized
the importance of these techniques, and we have received strong encouragement and financial support from our user community.
The SNBL Workshop on this theme seems to have been timely and useful, and we would like to thank all participants for their efforts,
and a special word of thanks to the Univerisity of Trondheim and the DUBBLE project for their financial support.