The Nordic Symposium on Catalysis is a biannual event, which is organized by the Nordic Catalysis Society (http://www.nordic-catalysis.org) with every member country (Denmark, Finland, Norway and Sweden) arranging the event each 8th year. The aim of the conference series is to create a breeding ground for ideas by ensuring meetings between researchers and catalyst developers, from academy as well as industry, within all aspects of catalysis. The 17th Nordic Symposium on Catalysis was organized at Lund University from June 14th to 16th 2016 with a special focus on surface science and catalysis for sustainable development.

About 170 participants registered for the symposium, and the final program consisted of five plenary lectures as well as 59 oral presentations and 86 posters. The welcome reception was also held at the recently inaugurated MAXIV synchrotron facility in Lund. The MAXIV and the European Spallation Source, which is under construction, and their application to catalyst research was also presented in much detail in conference presentations.

A total of 19 contributions from the conference were selected for publication in this special issue proceedings. The contributions range in topic from catalyst characterization through emission abatement, oxidation reactions and synthesis gas utilization to the catalytic conversion of renewable feedstocks into chemicals.

We would like to thank the Editors of Topics of Catalysis for the opportunity to publish the Proceedings of the 16th Nordic Symposium on Catalysis. We would also like to thank all authors and referees who contributed to the publication of this special issue.


Lund, March 3, 2017.