Catalysing the transition to ‘resource at source’; exploring biomass-to-chemicals to expedite decarbonisation of the chemicals industry

Project ID: 2228cd1357 (You will need this ID for your application)

Under Offer

Research Theme: Energy and Decarbonisation

UCL Lead department: Chemistry

Project Summary:

Global use of biomass must intensify to sustain progress towards net zero. Biomass uses across the economy include energy/heat generation, transport fuels and chemicals. Via government incentives, significant advancements have been made in the power and transport sectors, but there is a lack of strategy regarding biomass’ role in decarbonising the chemical industry.1 New routes to high value chemicals will bring significant benefits to the UK, regarding net zero, improved competitiveness, stimulate investment, reduce imports and value chain dependence to cover current demand.2 Lactic acid (LA), 5-hydroxymethylfurfural and succinic acid are exemplar molecules with great potential as petrochemical substitutes. The wide range of catalytic transformations to derivatives such as green solvents, fine/commodity chemicals, polymers and fuel precursors, renders LA a top platform molecule.3 Commercial LA production is mainly performed via saccharide fermentation although up-scaling and environmental issues and rapidly increasing demand have stimulated the development of alternative catalytic routes.3 Little attention has however, been paid to the conversion of feedstocks such as starch, largely present in waste from food processing and manufacturing.4 We propose to develop multifunctional base metal heterogeneous catalysts and catalytic processes for the tandem Lewis/Brønsted acid conversion of starch into LA. Active sites will be engineered, in particular making use of atomic layer deposition (ALD) techniques to control metal nuclearity (i.e. single atoms (ions), clusters, or nanoparticles) to promote particular steps involved in the reaction (depolymerisation, isomerisation, dehydration, 1,2-hydride shift), while exploiting Lewis/Brønsted acid synergy in decreasing reaction barriers5 (i.e. optimising location, density etc.). The project will involve in situ X-ray absorption and diffraction, and vibrational spectroscopies to characterise the active centres in working/failing catalysts. Skills learnt: catalyst synthesis, testing, recording/analysing vibrational and X-ray data, advanced analysis of XAS and PXRD data.