BEGIN:VCALENDAR
VERSION:2.0
PRODID:-//Memento EPFL//
BEGIN:VEVENT
SUMMARY:Sustainable Conversion of Biomass to Chemicals: Cooking or Art or 
 Science?
DTSTART:20151201T170000
DTEND:20151201T190000
DTSTAMP:20260916T044013Z
UID:b4c4eac745bcfacedac74e162e261b4529536e48fbb566648fd69795
CATEGORIES:Conferences - Seminars
DESCRIPTION:István T. Horváth\nBio: István T. Horváth received his Dip
 loma in Chemical Engineering (1977) and Ph.D. in Chemistry (1979)\, both a
 t Veszprem University (now University of Pannonia)\, Veszprem\, Hungary. H
 e 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 Exxo
 n (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 Universi
 ty of Hong Kong in May\, 2009 and was Head until July 31\, 2015.\nThe evol
 ution of green chemistry started in response to the increasing number of e
 nvironmental problems in the 1980s and was developed in the 1990s to becom
 e a guiding concept. The accurate definition of green chemistry by Anastas
  and Warner in combination with green chemical engineering initiated a par
 adigm shift in all parts of the chemical enterprise. The gradual replaceme
 nt 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. Con
 trarily\, sustainable development was poorly defined in the 1980s\, since 
 the key requisite to accurately predict the needs of future generations ha
 s been impossible to meet\, due to the extremely fast rate of scientific a
 nd technical advances. Consequently\, sustainability was replaced with sui
 tability by many stake holders\, as they have vested interests to call sui
 table developments sustainable\, e. g.  to make profits by businesses\, g
 et funded by NGOs\, or to be elected/reelected by politicians and politica
 l organizations. In order to overcome the vested and sometimes conflict of
  interests\, we recently suggested a new definition of sustainability: Nat
 ure’s resources\, including energy\, should be used at a rate at which t
 hey can be replaced naturally and the generation of waste cannot be faster
  than the rate of their remediation. We have now defined the sustainabilit
 y values for resource replacement (SVrep) and waste remediation (SVrem)\, 
 which were used to establish a sustainability indicator (SUSind) by mergin
 g the two-body issue to a single one.\nValorization of biomass-based waste
 s 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\, hydroge
 n\, and nitrogen atoms present in biomass-based wastes in the form of plat
 form chemicals\, water\, and ammonia with high atom economy. The facile co
 nversion of levulinic acid to valerolactone was achieved by using the Shvo
 -catalyst\, which was recently successfully heterogenized to silica coated
  magnetite nanoparticles.\nThe major challenges of sustainable development
  will be also discussed including the sustainable production of renewable 
 energy\, biomass-based fuels and consumer products\, and water.
LOCATION:BCH 2218 https://plan.epfl.ch/?room==BCH%202218
STATUS:CONFIRMED
END:VEVENT
END:VCALENDAR