Sustainable Conversion of Biomass to Chemicals: Cooking or Art or Science?
Event details
| Date | 01.12.2015 |
| Hour | 17:00 › 19:00 |
| Speaker |
István T. Horváth Bio: István T. Horváth received his Diploma in Chemical Engineering (1977) and Ph.D. in Chemistry (1979), both at Veszprem University (now University of Pannonia), Veszprem, Hungary. He was a Postdoctoral Research Associate at Yale University (1982 - 1984), a Scientific Co-worker at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH), Zurich, Switzerland (1984 - 1987), and a Senior Staff Chemist at Exxon (now ExxonMobil) Corporate Research, Annandale, New Jersey (1987-1998). After spending almost 10 years at the Institute of Chemistry, Eötvös University, Budapest, Hungary as a Professor, he moved to City University of Hong Kong in May, 2009 and was Head until July 31, 2015. |
| Location | |
| Category | Conferences - Seminars |
The evolution of green chemistry started in response to the increasing number of environmental problems in the 1980s and was developed in the 1990s to become a guiding concept. The accurate definition of green chemistry by Anastas and Warner in combination with green chemical engineering initiated a paradigm shift in all parts of the chemical enterprise. The gradual replacement of the end-of-the pipe control with prevention by design has the power to lower or eliminate the hazards of chemicals and chemical processes. Contrarily, sustainable development was poorly defined in the 1980s, since the key requisite to accurately predict the needs of future generations has been impossible to meet, due to the extremely fast rate of scientific and technical advances. Consequently, sustainability was replaced with suitability by many stake holders, as they have vested interests to call suitable developments sustainable, e. g. to make profits by businesses, get funded by NGOs, or to be elected/reelected by politicians and political organizations. In order to overcome the vested and sometimes conflict of interests, we recently suggested a new definition of sustainability: Nature’s resources, including energy, should be used at a rate at which they can be replaced naturally and the generation of waste cannot be faster than the rate of their remediation. We have now defined the sustainability values for resource replacement (SVrep) and waste remediation (SVrem), which were used to establish a sustainability indicator (SUSind) by merging the two-body issue to a single one.
Valorization of biomass-based wastes is perhaps one of the oldest practices of sustainable development, but it has to be reinvented to achieve higher sustainability in the future. We have been focusing on the conservation of the carbon, oxygen, hydrogen, and nitrogen atoms present in biomass-based wastes in the form of platform chemicals, water, and ammonia with high atom economy. The facile conversion of levulinic acid to valerolactone was achieved by using the Shvo-catalyst, which was recently successfully heterogenized to silica coated magnetite nanoparticles.
The major challenges of sustainable development will be also discussed including the sustainable production of renewable energy, biomass-based fuels and consumer products, and water.
Valorization of biomass-based wastes is perhaps one of the oldest practices of sustainable development, but it has to be reinvented to achieve higher sustainability in the future. We have been focusing on the conservation of the carbon, oxygen, hydrogen, and nitrogen atoms present in biomass-based wastes in the form of platform chemicals, water, and ammonia with high atom economy. The facile conversion of levulinic acid to valerolactone was achieved by using the Shvo-catalyst, which was recently successfully heterogenized to silica coated magnetite nanoparticles.
The major challenges of sustainable development will be also discussed including the sustainable production of renewable energy, biomass-based fuels and consumer products, and water.
Practical information
- General public
- Free
Organizer
- LCOM
Contact
- Rachel Paudex