Alice Jensen, Development Editor – Green Chemistry Blog

Author Archive

Industrial Green Chemistry World 2015

19 Oct 2015

The Industrial Green Chemistry World International Convention and Ecosystem 2015 (IGCW-2015) is to be held on 4-5th December 2015 in Mumbai, India. This is the fourth such event, initiated by the Green ChemisTree Foundation, and will bring together individuals and organisations from industry and academia, with the aim of expanding the implementation and industrialisation of green chemistry based technologies and products.

The IGCW-EXPO runs concurrently to the convention and acts as a green chemistry showcase for industry. Green Chemistry is proud to support this event, please click here to register online.

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Chip fat to biofuel made easy

09 Jul 2015

It is possible to synthesise hydrocarbon biofuel from waste fats and oils, such as cooking oils. Traditionally this process occurs with a catalyst under harsh alkaline conditions and in the presence of hydrogen. As a result, waste solvent is produced and not enough oxygen is removed for compatibility with diesel engines. In addition, with the presence of fatty acids the process does not work and the catalyst is deactivated.

In recent experiments, Ding Ma (Peking University) and Ning Yan (National University of Singapore), tested a series of nickel-based salts as pre-catalysits for deoxygenating fatty acids and triglycerides and forming shorter chain hydrocarbons, without the need for a solvent or hydrogen. The nickel nanoparticles that are formed act as a catalytic species and are stabilised by the presence of fatty acids. Although these preliminary results look promising, a lot more research into the applications and commercial viability of the findings are required.

Do you want to find out more?

Read the full Chemistry World article by Abigail Hallowes

Or, take a look at the original article which is free to access until 17th August 2015:

“Effective deoxygenation of fatty acids over Ni(OAc)₂ in the absence of H₂and solvent” by W. Li et al., DOI:10.1039/c5gc01147g

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Christian Stevens wins Emerging Technologies Competition 2015

09 Jul 2015

Green Chemistry Advisory Board member Christian Stevens has won first prize in the Energy & sustainability stream of the Royal Society of Chemistry’s Emerging Technologies Competition 2015. In this third year of the competition, applications were also accepted from outside the UK which enabled Christian and Wouter Ducheyne, of Ghent University and Caloritum in Belgium, achieve this success.

Their winning technology is a ‘Chemical pump for recovery of industrial waste heat’ and was developed jointly by the University of Ghent and Caloritum. It is an industrial chemical heat pump that can recover waste heat between 75-150°C and increase this to a useful heat level of over 200°C. This is a bio-inspired technology, being based on the phosphate transfer in the ATP-ADP cycle that occurs in the human body. Addressing a problem that cost the EU over €52bn per year, the patented technology can be implemented in production processes ranging from the petrochemical industry to food production and power generation.

The Emerging Technologies Competition is the Royal Society of Chemistry’s flagship annual innovation event and saw thirty teams pitch their emerging technologies to experienced judging panels. There are three streams to the competition: Healthcare, Energy & sustainability, and Materials and the top three teams in each stream received a prize at the ceremony on Monday 29^th June 2015. First prize winners receive a cash prize of £20,000, a profile in Chemistry World magazine, and a personalised package of tailored business support from one or more of the competition partner companies – all of which are major multinationals (such as Croda, Procter & Gamble, Pfizer, GSK etc.) with considerable experience in bringing new products to market.

We would like to congratulate Christian Stevens and Wouter Ducheyne for achieving this accolade.

Pictured: Christian Stevens (left) and Wouter Ducheyne (right), pitching at the annual innovation event.

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New Green Chemistry Board Member: Martina Peters

08 Jul 2015

We are pleased to welcome Dr Martina Peters as a new Green Chemistry Editorial Board Member.

Martina Peters studied Chemistry at RWTH Aachen University in Germany and at the University of Colorado at Boulder, USA. She finished her PhD with Prof. Walter Leitner at RWTH Aachen University in 2008 and continued as PostDoc at the CAT Catalytic Center at RWTH Aachen. In 2010 she joined Bayer Technology Services as project manager, focusing on chemical utilization of CO2 as C1-building block for polymers. In 2012 she became head of “Chemical Catalysis” at Bayer Technology Services, a team providing chemical expertise for different areas of application within Bayer. Since mid-2014 Martina is a senior strategists at Bayer AG in the area of Technology and Manufacturing Strategy. In her free time she enjoys doing sports, especially mountain biking.

Take a look at some of her contributions to Royal Society of Chemistry Journals (free to access until 30th August 2015):

Life cycle assessment of CO2 capture and utilization: a tutorial review, Niklas von der Assen, Philip Voll, Martina Peters and André Bardow , Chem. Soc. Rev., 2014,43, 7982-7994, DOI: 10.1039/C3CS60373C

Screening of new solvents for artemisinin extraction process using ab initio methodology, Alexei A. Lapkin, Martina Peters, Lasse Greiner, Smain Chemat, Kai Leonhard, Marcel A. Liauw and Walter Leitner, Green Chem., 2010,12, 241-251, DOI: 10.1039/B922001A

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Poster Prizes at the 3rd International Symposium on Green Chemistry

10 Jun 2015

The 3rd International Symposium on Green Chemistry (ISGC) took place on 3rd-7th May in La Rochelle, France. This was sponsored by Green Chemistry and a number of poster prizes were awarded by Green Chemistry Advisory Board member Professor Robin Rogers of McGill University, Canada and Dr Francois Jerome, University of Poitiers, France.

The first prize was awarded to Ana Franco of the University of Cordoba in Spain for her poster ‘Waste to materials: synthesis and applications of mesoporous silicates from rice husk‘. Felix Aremando Reano, of Chaire ABI – AgroParisTech, France, received the second prize for his poster ‘Determination of antioxidant activity of new biobased macrobisphenols‘, and Clemence Queffélec, University of Nantes, France, was awarded the third prize his poster ‘Hydrothermal liquefaction as a route to transform microalgae residues in bio-asphalt‘.

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A photochemical method for separating rare earth metals

29 May 2015

Rare earth metals are notoriously hard to separate from one another, due to the similarity of their chemical properties. At present, the complex series of solvent extraction steps to extract rare earths from their ores are only carried out in China. With their increasing utilisation in modern technologies, scientists have been collaborating to develop cleaner less intensive methods of rare earth separation.

Tom Van Gerven and Koen Binnemans of the University of Leuven in Belgium have worked together to combine their expertise and develop a photochemical method for extracting the europium and yttrium from an ionic liquid solution. Both elements are present in their trivalent state, but if europium absorbs light of the correct wavelength (provided by a low pressure mercury lamp) it will reduce to the divalent state and be precipitated out.

Want to know more?

Read the full article in Chemistry World by Jonathan Midgley.

Or, take a look at the original article which is free to access until 8th July 2015:

“Photochemical recycling of europium from Eu/Y mixtures in red lamp phosphor waste streams” by B Van den Bogaert et al., DOI:10.1039/c4gc02140a

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Professor Roger A. Sheldon elected Fellow of the Royal Society

07 May 2015

We would like to congratulate Professor Roger Sheldon, of Delft University of Technology and Green Chemistry Advisory Board member, in being elected as a fellow of the Royal Society. Fellows of the Royal Society are elected for life through a peer review process on the basis of excellence in science.

As Professor of Biocatalysis & Organic Chemistry, Roger is recognised for leading a distinguished career in which he has made pioneering contributions to catalytic oxidation, biocatalysis and green chemistry and has enabled the gap between organic synthesis and catalysis to be bridged. He also introduced the E-factor which has played a major role in drawing attention to the problem of waste generation in chemicals manufacture and provides an impetus for developing cleaner and more sustainable processes. In his most recent appointment as Distinguished Professor of Biocatalysis Engineering at the School of Chemistry at the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, Republic of South Africa, Roger will be involved in the development of green (enantio)selective biocatalytic processes. Roger is also Chief Executive Officer of CLEA Technologies B.V., a Biotech company specializing in the development of green biocatalytic processes and the cost-effective immobilization of enzymes as cross-linked enzyme aggregates.

Roger is revered by the green chemistry community as one of the founding fathers of the field and of this journal.

Read a selection of Roger’s papers – free to access until 15th June 2015:

The E Factor: fifteen years on, Roger A. Sheldon, Green Chem., 2007,9, 1273-1283
DOI: 10.1039/B713736M,

Green solvents for sustainable organic synthesis: state of the art, Roger A. Sheldon, Green Chem., 2005,7, 267-278
DOI: 10.1039/B418069K,

Biocatalysis in ionic liquids, Roger A. Sheldon, Rute Madeira Lau, Menno J. Sorgedrager, Fred van Rantwijk and Kenneth R. Seddon, Green Chem., 2002,4, 147-151
DOI: 10.1039/B110008B,

Professor Dr Roger A. Sheldon—65 years on, Ilya I. Moiseev, Shun-Ichi Murahashi, Martyn Poliakoff, Kenneth R. Seddon and Vytas K. Švedas, Green Chem., 2008,10, 270-270
DOI: 10.1039/B719347P

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Richard P. Wool

24 Apr 2015

Professor Richard P. Wool, a leading figure in the green chemistry community, sadly died on 24th March 2015. Richard Wool was Professor of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering at the University of Delaware in the United States, and headed the Affordable Composites from Renewable Sources (ACRES), which carried out work to develop uses for bio-materials such as chicken feathers and soybeans to create a diversity of products from tractors to circuit boards to a synthetic fabric named Eco-Leather.

After completing his Bachelors degree in Chemistry in his hometown of Cork, Professor Wool moved to Utah in the United States where he completed his Masters degree and Ph.D.. This is also where he started to build his illustrious career that focussed on improving materials synthesis in order to reduce the impact this may have on the environment and on human health. He received a number of accolades for his contribution to green chemistry, including the ACS Award for Affordable Green Chemistry, the U.S.A EPA’s Presidential Green Chemistry Challenge Award for his work in Sustainable Polymers and Composites and he became a Fellow of the Royal Society of Chemistry in January 2015.

Professor Wool was also a member of the Green Chemistry Advisory Board and his contribution to the journal and the community will be sincerely missed. Green Chemistry would like to send our deepest condolences to Richard Wool’s family and friends.

Credit: University of Delaware

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Call for Posters – 3rd International Conference of the Cluster of Excellence “Tailor-Made Fuels from Biomass”

15 Apr 2015

Be part of the 3rd International Conference of the Cluster of Excellence “Tailor-Made Fuels from Biomass”! This conference is open to participants from science and industry interested in fields related to biomass and biofuels. The following topics will be addressed in separate sessions during the conference:

Biomass Fractionation and Pre-treatment
Enzymatic and Catalytic Biomass Processing
Catalytic Synthesis and Conversion of Biomass-based Streams to Platform Molecules and Fuels
(Bio-)refinery Process Optimization
Injection, Ignition and Combustion of Biofuels
Combustion Process and Exhaust Gas Aftertreatment Optimization of Biofuels

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Green Chemistry themed issue on Elemental Recovery and Sustainability now online

08 Apr 2015

Issue 4 of Green Chemistry is a part themed issue on ‘Elemental Recovery and Sustainability‘ focusing on how we can develop methods to ensure that elements are available for use by future generations through sustainable use and recovery.

The guest editors for this themed collection are James Clark (University of York, UK), Andrew Hunt (University of York, UK), Avtar Matharu (University of York, UK) and Alex King (Ames Labs, USA), read their editorial for free here.

The outside front cover of the issue features the Critical Review “Bio-derived materials as a green route for precious & critical metal recovery and re-use” by Jennifer R. Dodson, Helen L. Parker, Andrea Muñoz García, Alexandra Hicken, Kaana Asemave, Thomas J. Farmer, He He, James H. Clark and Andrew J. Hunt. In this article they give an overview of research in critical and precious metal recovery using biosorption, application to real-life wastes and uses of the metal-loaded materials.

The inside front cover of the issue features the Paper “Recycling of rare earths from NdFeB magnets using a combined leaching/extraction system based on the acidity and thermomorphism of the ionic liquid [Hbet][Tf2N]” by David Duponta and Koen Binnemans. In this article they describe how a new recycling process was developed to recover rare earths from roasted NdFeB magnets using the thermomorphic and acidic properties of the ionic liquid [Hbet][Tf2N] to achieve a combined leaching/extraction system.

These two articles are free to access until 15th May and there are also a number of open access articles within the issue:

“Greening the global phosphorus cycle: how green chemistry can help achieve planetary P sustainability” by Paul J. A. Withers, James J. Elser, Julian Hilton, Hisao Ohtake, Willem J. Schipper and Kimo C. van Dijk.

“Non-heme iron catalysts for epoxidation and aziridination reactions of challenging terminal alkenes: towards sustainability” by Anja Fingerhut, Olga V. Serdyuk and Svetlana B. Tsogoeva.

“Reclamation of reactive metal oxides from complex minerals using alkali roasting and leaching – an improved approach to process engineering” by S. Sanchez-Segado, T. Makanyire, L. Escudero-Castejon, Y. Hara and A. Jha.

“Chameleon behaviour of iodine in recovering noble-metals from WEEE: towards sustainability and “zero” waste” by Angela Serpe, Americo Rigoldi, Claudia Marras, Flavia Artizzu, Maria Laura Mercuri and Paola Deplano.

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