Catalyst Benchmarking
Benchmarking in catalysis means evaluating a new catalyst, measurement or computational method by comparison with an accepted standard under agreed conditions, so that results from different groups and subfields can be compared fairly. It rests on community agreement about reference materials, reference reactions, performance metrics (activity, selectivity, deactivation) and how they are measured and reported, and it links experiment with theory by supplying reliable reference values.
Best practices across catalysis subfields (2016)
Bligaard et al. define benchmarking as a community activity with both technical and social components and survey its use in computational, heterogeneous, molecular and electrocatalysis (Bligaard et al. 2016). They recall precedents such as the EuroPt-1 and EuroNi-1 standard catalysts and the World Gold Council Au standards, and recommend standard reactions with accepted site-normalized rates, turnover frequencies measured free of transport limitations, blind round-robin tests to establish realistic error bars, quantified deactivation, careful active-site counting, and controls without catalyst. For electrocatalysis they call for currents normalized to geometric area, electrochemically active surface area and mass, and note that no reliable ECSA method exists for non-Pt catalysts. On the theory side they argue that experimental adsorption and activation energies on well-defined surfaces are needed to validate DFT, and that scaling relations act as benchmarks that reveal performance limits within a class of materials. Summary: bligaard2016.