Andraž Kocjan was involved in an interdisciplinary research directed by Sašo Gyergyek and Darko Makovec from the Department for Materials Synthesis and from the Department of Nanostructured Materials in a collaboration with researchers from the Department of Catalysis and Reaction Engineering of the National Institute of Chemistry. The work was published in the renowned scientific journal Green Chemistry, entitled Hierarchical Ru-bearing Alumina/Magnetic Iron-Oxide Composite for the Magnetically Heated Hydrogenation of Furfural. The paper demonstrates application of magnetic heating of nanoparticles in AC-field to drive chemical reaction. The authors showed that conversion of furfural to furfuryl alcohol over the catalyst in the same time interval reached 95% when “targeted” heating by AC magnetic field was used, but only 63% when conventional heating was applied. They were the first to show that a well-designed hierarchical composite (UK patent) can simultaneously serve as a catalyst and heat source to drive a technologically important chemical reaction in a slurry-type reactor.
