Dr Anabel Lanterna is Assistant Professor in the School of Chemistry and a member of the Green Chemicals Beacon. Her expertise in photochemistry and materials chemistry has led her to work with world experts in the field, most recently with Prof. Tito Scaiano in Canada. In 2020 she moved to Nottingham to start her independent research career focusing on the design of heterogeneous photocatalytic processes. 

What is your role here at Nottingham?
I am an Assistant Professor in the School of Chemistry. My research focuses on the design of heterogeneous photocatalysts for the generation of green fuels (H₂) and the development of sustainable processes in the manufacturing of fine chemicals. I am also currently teaching part of a 4th-year module centred on how inorganic materials can interact with light, leading to fascinating properties that are applied to products we rely on in our daily life.

Could you tell me a bit about your research career?
As a PhD student at the University of Cordoba in Argentina, I studied the properties of plasmonic nanoparticles and their interactions with the environment. During a short internship at the University of Valencia in Spain, I was able to explore the potential of light not only for making nanoparticles, but also for enhancing their catalytic activity. Motivated by these initial studies, and after I obtained my PhD degree, I moved to Canada to work with Prof. Tito Scaiano in the field of heterogeneous photocatalysis – developing, among other concepts, the idea that the irradiance (number of photons per second per area) and the energy (wavelength) of light can be used to tune the activity of the photocatalysts. My scientific contribution to the fields of photochemistry and materials chemistry has helped me win the Gerhard Closs Postdoctoral Award from the Inter-American Photochemistry Society and the Young Materials Chemists Award from the Canadian Society for Chemistry. This year, I joined the School of Chemistry and the Green Chemicals Beacon to start my independent research career focussing on the design of heterogeneous photocatalytic processes.

How would you explain your research to an ordinary person?
In our lab we design materials that can harness the power of light to produce valuable chemicals under (environmentally and economically) mild reaction conditions. In this way, we can improve the manufacturing processes of many goods we use in our daily life – food preservatives, paints, cosmetics, pharmaceuticals, and more.

How does being part of the Green Chemicals Beacon help you achieve your goals?
I believe the efficient use of solar energy has great potential to help in the battle against the ongoing climate emergency. Accordingly, my research is focused on developing easily-reusable materials that harness the power of abundant and clean solar energy for sustainable manufacturing practices. Being part of the Beacon gives me the opportunity to collaborate with people from multiple disciplines with similar sustainability research goals. The industry collaboration afforded by the Beacon also helps our cross-disciplinary team develop implementable solutions to practical problems.

How does your research affect ordinary people?
A lot… Think, for instance, about pharmaceuticals. If we can reduce their production costs while synthesising them in a more environmentally friendly manner, we could improve our public health with more affordable medicines and at the same time reduce our environmental footprint. It is a win-win situation!

What current projects are you working on?
I am currently focussed on two main streams that involve the design of materials that can convert light into valuable chemicals. One of them focuses on the development of novel heterogeneous photocatalytic processes for the synthesis of target molecules relevant to the industry of fine chemicals, aiming to reduce the environmental impact of manufacturing processes. The second stream is related to the generation of green fuels, e.g., H₂, using sunlight.

How has the pandemic affected your working day? Are you back in the labs or working from home?
The pandemic has affected me as many others around the world. However, I am part of that portion of the population who is lucky to have a supportive environment not only at work but also at home. When all this started, I was in Canada, preparing for my move to the UK. During the first months of the pandemic, there were so many uncertainties, that we decided it was better to start working from Canada. This was rather challenging, but not impossible, as colleagues at Nottingham were very supportive. Fortunately, I was able to move to the UK recently, and I am now really excited about going back to the lab. I work from home only a few days a week, I try to visit my lab each day and get some things done. The lab is almost ready to receive our first PhD student in a couple of weeks!

How did you become interested in science? Where do you get your inspirations from?
I was always a very curious person. This curiosity was mainly fed by my father, who I remember reading science magazines in his spare time. Later on, I had the privilege to work with Prof. Scaiano, a world leader in the field of photochemistry. His curiosity and constant excitement about chemistry were an inspiration for me. He showed me that as an academic we can contribute to our society, from developing transformative ideas to improve our daily life to educating the next generation of scientists. Our planet is facing tremendous challenges; as scientists, we can do our part to help and this inspires me to do better science every day.

Do you have any advice for young scientists?
Focus your research on topics you are curious and passionate about; don’t just go with the flow. It is really important you really enjoy what you are doing and to be patient, as things do not always work the way we expect. Be creative.

What is your favourite career moment so far?
I would like to highlight two moments that have given me great satisfaction thus far. One was when one of the materials we created in the lab got attention from different industrial partners. This showed me my research was getting close to potential real-life applications. The second great moment was when both the Canadian Society for Chemistry and the Inter-American Photochemistry Society awarded me for my contributions in the fields of materials science and photochemistry respectively; when your work is being recognised by your peers, it feels you are on the right track.

Anabel currently has a funded PhD position available in her research team. You can find more details and apply here.

To find out more about the Green Chemicals Beacon and how our team of researchers are working to secure the low carbon economy of the future, please visit the website or follow us on Twitter @UoN_GCB

The post The magic Lanterna: harnessing light for sustainable chemicals appeared first on Green Chemicals Beacon.

Chai Lee (Jesslyn) is a Research Fellow in Sustainable Processing in the Green Chemicals Beacon and is also a member of the Sustainable Processing Technologies Group.  In this interview, she talks to Jo Gregory about her research, inspirations and the importance of using sustainable processes for the generation of electricity and power.

What is your role here?

My research is focused on supercritical water gasification (SCWG) which is a process used in the production of green hydrogen. I work on the development and design of a highly efficient SCWG system as well as looking at how to optimise the whole process in order to reduce energy consumption, maximize the hydrogen yield and minimize the char formation that can cause blocking problems. I focus on using lignocellulosic biomass waste and wastewater from food and beverage industries as the feedstock of SCWG process. I also investigate feedstock pre-treatment methods before the SCWG process starts which can help to enhance biomass slurry pumpability during a continuous run, increase the biomass decomposition rate during gasification process that can lead to the improvement of gasification efficiency and hydrogen yield.

What were you working on before you started your current role?

I did my Master’s degree in Taiwan and then a year’s research experience working in biological chemistry looking into the interaction between protein and cell membranes. My PhD study at the University of Nottingham was focused on the development of advance extraction methods, in particular, using microwaves to extract plant-based bio-flocculants as a sustainable alternative to chemical flocculants. Flocculants are substances which bring together fine particles in liquids and make them either float to the surface or settle at the bottom making them easier to separate. My study showed that microwave extraction can extract the bio-flocculant in a shorter time (minutes) and also generate a higher bio-flocculant yield (produce more) compared to conventional methods. I also found that the efficiency of microwave-extracted bio-flocculants is comparable to chemical flocculants. Green bio-flocculants are extracted using only water and we use these ‘green’ chemicals to treat wastewater, for example, to remove suspended solids and sludge from the wastewater so that the water can then be used again.

Image taken from Jesslyn’s article published in Chemical Engineering Research and Design 1 3 2 ( 2 0 1 8 ) 358–369

After my PhD, I worked in Hong Kong as a senior engineer in a research institute. I worked on a collaborative project between the institute and three industrial partners looking at the development and application of nanobubble technology in water and wastewater treatment. The project involved the studies of 3 systems: (1) nanobubble ozone oxidation system (10 and 50L) for the treatment of textile wastewater focusing on removal of colour and chemical oxygen demand (COD), (2) nanobubble ozone oxidation system (80L) for the sanitization of river water focusing on removal of E.coli and total bacteria, (3) continuous-mode pilot-scale (20 to 40mL/min sewage input) nanobubble-moving bed bio-reactor system for the treatment of sewage focusing on removal of COD, ammonia and total nitrogen.
It was great to have that experience of working with industry. I really enjoyed working collaboratively, finding out how we could meet their expectations and discuss how we can work together to achieve results. Having completed the project I moved to Nottingham to start my current role with the Green Chemicals Beacon.

How would you describe what you do to an ordinary person?

I use advanced technology to convert biomass waste into green hydrogens that can be used to generate electricity and power. The advantage of this technology is that it can generate hydrogen very quickly, using only water and with no chemicals involved so it’s also a sustainable process. Using waste to generate hydrogen is very valuable because it’s an alternative to the energy we generate from petroleum which is not environmentally friendly and is also finite!

How is being part of the Green Chemicals Beacon helping you to achieve your goals?

It’s so important now to find sustainable alternatives in the production and manufacture of chemicals and that’s why I want to focus my research around finding green processes which will be useful in protecting the environment. Using plant-based bioflocculants, only water as a solvent to extract the bioflocculants from the plant and working with plants instead of artificial products are all helping to make processes more sustainable.

The Green Chemicals Beacon is a brilliant way for me to get more experience in order to make a contribution. There are so many scientists and engineers here using their experience and expertise to deliver greener processes and greener chemicals and it’s so valuable for me to be able to learn more from my colleagues about what research has been done, what still needs to be done and discuss potentials for collaboration. There are also opportunities to work with industry and access to state-of-the-art equipment.

Where do you get your inspirations from?

I remember when I was in secondary school being really curious about all the things we have, why we have them and how they work. Washing machines, cookers, cars; all things that help to make our daily life much easier and inventions that came from research in the fields of science, technology and engineering. I was really interested in how this research was scaled up into mass production and so I chose to go into the science stream in school so that I could find the answers to my questions and continue my curiosity. It was really fun and interesting to know more and it just made me want to continue. What it also made me aware of how advances in technology have brought harm to the environment such as the huge amounts of carbon dioxide released in the production of everyday products as well as toxic chemicals which often end up in wastewater. So although these products have given us a lot of conveniences they have had a very negative impact, which has led to my interest in finding out how we can develop products and processes that are useful to us but also minimise impact to the environment. This is my hope!

How have you found not being able to be in the lab during the pandemic?

Well it has been challenging and I’m really looking forward to being back in the labs but it’s also been an opportunity for me because most of the research that I’ve done previously was based in the lab and I didn’t get much time to do other important areas of research such as simulation work. Simulations are really valuable for scientists and engineers in being able to predict what will happen in our experimental work. We can also use simulations to see what kind of challenges we will face when we want to scale-up the process. Working from home has been the perfect time to get experience in this area and see how simulation and experimental work can be correlated with each other.

What advice would you give to young engineers?

If you have questions follow your curiosity and find the answers. It’s really fun and really rewarding!

To find out more about the Green Chemicals Beacon and how our team of researchers are working to secure the low carbon economy of the future, please visit the website or follow us on Twitter @UoN_GCB

The post Super sustainable processes: making green hydrogen from waste. appeared first on Green Chemicals Beacon.

Dr John Heap is Associate Professor in Synthetic Biology and Metabolic Engineering at the University of Nottingham and member of the Green Chemicals Beacon. His recent grant successes include funding from the BBSRC to produce high-value chemicals using biotechnology. He is also an Honorary Senior Lecturer at Imperial College London. In this interview he talks to Jo Gregory about his research, tackling climate change and working with metabolic superpowers.

How would you describe what you do to an ordinary person? 

I use biological technologies for society and the bioeconomy. These technologies, known as synthetic biology, engineering biology or biotechnology, seek to improve and redesign systems that are already found in nature, or to design new ones from scratch. The results are molecules or cells much like natural ones, but which are more suitable for particular applications. So the long-term motivation is how we transition to a sustainable future and the role that biological technologies play in achieving that goal.

In terms of our specific interests and specialties, sometimes we describe our work as synthetic biology-driven metabolic engineering. Metabolic engineering is the process of modifying organisms to change their metabolic properties. An example of this is that we can change something about how cells consume substrates or take food in. In synthetic biology and biotechnology the most popular organisms to work with are model organisms which are the conventional organisms that we know a lot about for example E. coli or yeast. They are easier to work with and so there’s a lot of expertise in this area. But there are many other interesting organisms out there that have useful properties. We sometimes call these metabolic superpowers because they can do interesting things like grow on waste gases or produce different products. These non-model organisms are the bacteria our research team have spent a lot of time working on as it’s important to be able to access a wider range of organisms than just the classic model organisms. Over the last ten years, we’ve seen the development of some state-of-the-art new technologies which so far have mainly been used in model organisms. What our team are trying to do is bring those two worlds together to try and bring the best synthetic biology technologies and make them move forward or unlock the potential of some of these more interesting organisms.

What are the main challenges of the research you do?

There are different kinds of challenges. One example being that if you take a piece of DNA that you’ve designed for one organism, a lot of the principles suggest it should work nicely in a different organism, but in practice you find that’s not the case. So one of our challenges is understanding why this happens and then coming up with different sets of design principles.  You could think of it as being like our local dialects and we are learning the different languages. Sometimes there are more fundamental differences, for example, there are some enzymes that are poisoned or deactivated by the presence of oxygen. Some organisms produce oxygen naturally like photosynthetic organisms including plants or the microbial equivalent of plants like algae and cyanobacteria. This presents fundamental incompatibilities. How do you get an enzyme that must avoid oxygen to work in an organism that produces oxygen? Some of those are very hard to solve, but nature has its own solutions to some of those things, for example, the organisms that produce oxygen sometimes make specialized compartments where they don’t let oxygen in and they do their oxygen-free stuff in this part of the cell.

How often do you have a wow moment?

I think it varies as some parts of projects that you take on are lower risk and they don’t knock your socks off. You know they are basically going to work in some way. That doesn’t mean it’s not important. To use an engineering analogy I sometimes think of a problem as a dial and that the answer is going to be somewhere on the dial you just don’t know where it is at the start. But you figure out where it is on the dial and then you’ve learned what you needed to. It doesn’t set the world on fire but it enables you to move forward in that area. But then you also have those moments of realising that if you put two particular things together something awesome might happen, and you don’t know if it will work or not and sometimes it doesn’t. Sometimes you can’t figure out why, but sometimes you do, and those are the ones that are a wow moment.

How has the closure of labs due to the pandemic affected your research?

It’s definitely been challenging as we moved the lab to Nottingham from Imperial towards the end of last year, and setting up a new lab takes time, doing all the safety stuff, moving and installing equipment and infrastructure, and so on, so we had only really been up and running for around six weeks before we had to close again for four months during lockdown. We’re back in the labs now and really happy with how it’s going, but it has meant that we weren’t able to be as productive in the lab this year as we would have been.

How are you finding working from home rather than the lab during a pandemic?

Before lockdown, as head of a research group, I spent most of my time with an office quite near my lab and I liked being able to pop in and see what my team were working on and having that immediate connection. So it’s been a weird year to start somewhere new. The usual way that you would get to know people professionally, walking along the corridor, knocking on people’s office door and having a chat, going to seminars, none of that’s happened, and although I’m also quite happy doing my own thing you definitely miss that collegiate feeling.

How will your research affect ordinary people and benefit society?

Essentially a lot of it comes down to how the world economy works and how our lives work. Globally we currently get an overwhelming amount of our energy and chemicals from fossil sources. For most people, the word ‘chemicals’ feels really divorced from reality, but they are actually in everything. You don’t see the solvents that are used in producing the paint on our walls or the synthetic fibres in our clothes and carpets or all of the materials used to produce our phones, cars, everything. But they all have a complicated supply chain of many hundreds of chemicals in them and the vast majority of those come from petrochemical sources.

There are two big reasons why we haven’t moved away from fossil fuels. The first is that oil is cheap (but also finite) and the other factor is that emitting CO₂ is cheap. So to have a factory right now and spew CO₂ into the atmosphere is cheap or free, but this is artificial because there is a cost, it’s just that the people who emit the CO₂ don’t pay the cost. The cost is climate change and environmental degradation. So if we’re going to have the world in future being anything other than completely destroyed both those things are going to have to change. There will be a tipping point and when that comes biological technologies will be responsible for a lot of chemical manufacture and they will displace it being done using fossil carbon. The timing of that is hard to predict and depends partly on when the pricing of carbon emission changes and when the usage of oil changes. But it is coming and we’re going to have a massive increase in biological manufacturing, so a lot of research, a lot of development and a lot of learning about how to do that is what’s going on right now and we are just one small part of a much bigger world picture of doing that.

How soon do you think this change will happen?

I think it’s easy to think that things are changing, and lawmakers are taking steps to sort it out and get to this tipping point, but the truth is that there is still a long way to go. Looking at data over the past fifty years, our primary energy consumption is basically almost all fossil carbon and only a tiny amount of renewable energy. The UK is a world leader in renewables but it’s only a drop in the ocean on a world scale so that has got to change. Predicting the future is obviously speculative and guesswork but there’s a good paper from last year which predicts that in the next fifty years if power plants that already exist (and also those currently proposed but which have not been built yet), particularly coal-fired power plants, work out their normal working life then the amount of CO₂ they will put into the atmosphere is a really worrying amount if we want to hit the Paris 1.5 °C climate target. The implication being either we let that happen, or we don’t, but avoiding that means shutting down very large numbers of power plants before their planned working life is over, which obviously has huge economic and political implications. So it’s super challenging and very problematic. It’s not a done deal and governments have not yet solved this problem.

People think that climate change is important but not very urgent. As humans, we are not good at dealing with stuff that has impact a long time away in the future. For most of us, the worst impacts of climate change will happen after our lifetimes, but the problem is these impacts depend on what is happening right now – climate change isn’t waiting.

Is the goal to commercialise your research?

We’ve been involved in commercialisation a number of times, and we have projects going on right now on that front. We also have relationships with companies who fund research projects with us which is essentially commercialisation in a way, as it is research partly driven by the interest of an external commercial partner. This is important too because public sector doesn’t do everything and sometimes the commercial sector provides the best way of doing things, including when universities set up spin-out companies which go out into the world and add benefit.

What are your motivations and inspirations?

I think your motivations change over the years. In the early part of my career, I didn’t know if I wanted to pursue a career in academia or in industry. I worked in a pharmaceutical company during my undergraduate studies and returned to them after my degree. At this point, I already knew that I wanted to do a PhD but I hadn’t found the right PhD for me yet. I had a good relationship with the people at that company and was offered the chance to return after my PhD studies but towards the end of my PhD I was really fascinated by the intellectual freedom of figuring out research puzzles, enjoying problems and moving forward the research. Biotechnology is basically cool and interesting and fun! You design and build stuff so it’s a bit of engineering as well.  Experiencing that came with the realisation that I wanted to continue in academia.

Climate change has become an increasingly important motivator for sure. I have young children now and you want to feel like you’re doing something positive and something you believe in. Research and academia is really hard with lots of ups and downs but I want to show my kids that I’m doing something worthwhile and making some kind of positive contribution, and working together with other people.

You can find out more about John’s research and the BBSRC award on the Heap lab website.

To find out more about the Green Chemicals Beacon and how our team of researchers are working to secure the low carbon economy of the future, please visit the website or follow us on Twitter @UoN_GCB

The post A shock to the system: how biotech is using nature to tackle climate change. appeared first on Green Chemicals Beacon.

Dr Mattia Silvi joined the Green Chemicals Beacon as a Nottingham Research Fellow in October 2019. Based in the GSK Carbon Neutral Laboratories for Sustainable Chemistry he directs a research group who are focused on the development of new organic chemistry reactions. In this interview, he talks to Jo Gregory about his research, his inspirations and how harnessing the potential of visible light will transform the way chemicals and pharmaceuticals are manufactured and secure a sustainable future.

Could you tell me a bit about your research career?

I obtained my BSc in Analytical Chemistry and my MSc in Organic Chemistry at the University Sapienza (Rome, Italy) publishing a thesis about the functionalisation of complex alkaloids for the development of novel catalysts for organic reactions. I then carried out my doctoral studies at the Institute of Chemical Research of Catalonia, ICIQ (Tarragona, Spain – 2011-2015) under the supervision of Prof. Paolo Melchiorre, where I developed a sincere interest in the field of photochemistry, the use of visible light to drive organic reactions. I spent part of my PhD research at the University of Michigan (Ann Arbor, MI, United States of America – 2014) in the group of Prof. John P. Wolfe working in the field of metal catalysis for the development of novel organic reactions. After obtaining my PhD, I was awarded a Marie Skłodowska-Curie European Individual Fellowship and moved to the University of Bristol (2016-2019) in the group of Prof. Varinder K. Aggarwal FRS, working in the fields of boron chemistry, photochemistry and the total synthesis of prostanoids with relevant biological activity. In 2019 I was awarded a Nottingham Research Fellowship to start my independent career at the University of Nottingham.

How would you explain your research to an ordinary person?
Our research focuses on organic chemistry. Although we are often unaware, organic chemistry surrounds us and is in our everyday life: medicines, agrochemicals and technological materials are all based on organic molecules that need to be prepared, studied and produced in small or large scale. In our lab, we routinely work on the discovery of novel organic reactions to produce the molecules of tomorrow.
Visible light is a clean, inexhaustible and ubiquitous form of energy that remains largely underused to-date. The chemical methodologies that we are studying in our laboratory harness the potential of visible light to drive novel chemical reactions, and synthesise molecules with potential applications in various fields, including medicinal chemistry.

Photochemical reactions irradiated with blue light

How does being part of the Green Chemicals Beacon help you to achieve your goals?

The Green Chemicals Beacon is an incredible team of people and scientists, and all of us share the same belief. We all trust that we can work together to improve how chemicals are produced and manufactured in order to minimise the global environmental impact on our world.
The generation of reactive chemical species (i.e. free radicals) is often key in chemical processes. These species are incredibly high in energy, and their generation often requires hazardous chemicals or extreme conditions (i.e. intense UV irradiation and high temperature/pressure). Our mission, as part of the Green Chemicals team, is to study how the inexhaustible energy of visible light can provide a more sustainable tool for the generation of these reactive species, and identify the chemical processes of tomorrow.

Mattia in the lab with his PhD student Dario

How does your research affect ordinary people?
We believe in target-focused, application-driven research. We are all well-aware of the significant impact that our daily activities have on our environment. As well as a substantial increase in the level of CO2 in our atmosphere, the increasing pollution and the overuse of natural resources are leading to a number of other severe issues. We believe that visible light photochemistry will provide more benign chemical processes for the synthesis of the materials, the agrochemicals and the pharmaceuticals of tomorrow and we are working for the development of novel processes in this field in order to secure a better future.
We also believe that visible light photochemistry has the potential to create molecules with unique biological properties, currently inaccessible with other conventional chemical processes. In this vein, we have recently established a collaboration with other researchers from the School of Pharmacy and the School of Medicine at the University of Nottingham with the aim of developing novel molecules with activity against cancer.

Mattia with his research team outside the GSK Carbon Neutral Laboratories for Sustainable Chemistry, home to the Silvi Research Group.

What current projects are you working on?
Synthetic chemistry lays at the heart of science and technology and has greatly enabled the development of important life-changing discoveries. For instance, the discovery of novel powerful medicines generally requires the study of a number of structural analogues of complex chemical structures. Traditionally, to construct these analogues, pairs of elementary molecular fragments are connected through a multi-step approach to enhance molecular complexity until the desired molecule is achieved (pretty much like we would do using a LEGO construction kit). However, the variety of structures accessible is generally limited by the reactions available to connect the elementary building blocks and the time/resources required to achieve the desired compound, defining strict boundaries to chemists’ imagination for the invention of novel bioactive molecules.
In contrast to traditional pair assembly chemistry, we are working on the development of a novel visible-light-driven process which allows the multi-component assembly of complex molecular fragments in a single chemical step. We believe that visible light photochemistry is an incredibly powerful tool, that will provide a reliable reactivity framework that will allow the rapid modification of complex bioactive molecules, generating myriad novel structural analogues for the creation of the pharmaceuticals of tomorrow.

Mattia setting up a photochemical reaction

How has the pandemic affected your working day? Are you back in the labs or working from home?
COVID-19 has strongly impacted not only our everyday life but also the everyday life of our relatives, our parents and our loved ones. I am originally from Italy, and my country of origin was the first in Europe to be violently struck by this challenging virus, this significantly exposed me to how important it is to control of the spread of this disease. Thanks to dedicated teams at the University our safety has been guaranteed by a number of prompt actions, which has ranged from closing some of the laboratories and buildings to the increase of PPE for the laboratory work. We feel we are working in a very safe environment, although we are also aware that the virus is still there, and we need to keep our guard up.
We have recently resumed our work in the laboratory after a long lockdown period. My team is currently carrying out experimental work although at reduced working time and with the increased use of PPE (in addition to usual PPE we use facemasks and a combination of safety specs and glass visors). I work from home, as well as join the lab to support my students in the challenging tasks that every day organic chemists have to perform.

How did you become interested in science? 
Chemistry has always fascinated me. I quickly realised that I had to follow my passion for chemistry during my time in high school. I remember that I was so interested in the subject that without studying or reading my notes I was able to remember every detail of the courses. This was far from being the case with other subjects I was less interested in.
When I was a kid I was also fascinated by chemical reactions, I loved to perform simple reactions at home, like creating CO2 from vinegar and bicarbonate. I remember of a few occasions in which my parents were not particularly happy with the outcome of my experiments especially when “chemicals” were spilt around the house! I have seen that nowadays on YouTube there are a number of videos describing experiments that can be performed at home. Luckily for my parents, YouTube did not exist at that time.

Colourful photochemical reactions at work.

Do you have any advice for young scientists?
My advice is to always chase your dreams with perseverance, this applies not only for science but also for art, music etc. Science is fascinating, but can be very frustrating from time to time as experiments do fail! Although we often picture scientists in their lab crying out “Eureka!” all the time, it is way more usual that our experiments fail rather than succeed. The reason for this is that we routinely challenge the unknown. There is a reason why it’s called “the unknown” because it is very challenging to discover!

What is your greatest career moment so far?
I have recently entered a new chapter of my career in Nottingham and started a research group with full independence and freedom. I have just been awarded a generous EPSRC grant that will secure resources for my group for the next few years. Therefore, I would say that this is the greatest career moment for me because these achievements mean that other people share my beliefs and trust in us as a research group. There is still a world to discover out there, and we can’t wait to keep challenging the unknown!

You can find out more about Mattia’s research as well as opportunities to work with his research team at The Silvi Research Group website.

To find out more about the Green Chemicals Beacon and how our team of researchers are working to secure the low carbon economy of the future, please visit the website or follow us on Twitter @UoN_GCB

The post Planet organic: an interview with Dr Mattia Silvi appeared first on Green Chemicals Beacon.

Jonathan Hirst is a Professor of Computational Chemistry and member of the Green Chemicals Beacon. He has recently been awarded the Royal Academy of Engineering Chair in Emerging Technologies. The prestigious award is a significant financial investment over ten years and will support Jonathan and his team with their aim of developing machine learning models, which will allow sustainable chemists particularly in the pharmaceutical sector to produce drugs and chemicals more efficiently, safely and sustainably.

What does the award mean and what do you hope to achieve?

The core aim is to help chemists make better choices from a sustainability and environmental perspective very early on in the discovery phase of a new project. If this can actually be achieved then there’ll be big dividends downstream, particularly once the chemical process is scaled up. We want to provide some tools that assist chemists in their compound selection and in their synthetic route selection. But we can’t create an algorithm out of nothing. We are going to need to collect the expertise of chemists who are currently at the frontline in the labs and use that knowledge to develop some machine learning techniques that chemists can interact with and interpret and that make sense to them intuitively. That’s the idea in a nutshell!

Do you have an idea of what you want the tools to be?

The project is a more technology-oriented than things I’ve done previously. The first big milestone will be having some software that chemists like to use and that we can use to start capturing some of their data. Electronic lab notebooks are widely used in industry with varying degrees of receptiveness from the end-users and they are used less widely in academia, partly because of price considerations. So we want something that even as a test product is going to feel useful to chemists and not like an extra task they have to do, and getting that up and running is the first big hurdle. We have been working with some chemists on the Prosperity Partnership for a Healthier Nation which is an EPSRC funded project with various colleagues at Nottingham and academics at Strathclyde and colleagues and collaborators at GlaxoSmithKline (GSK), so they are going to be one of our prototypes or focus groups and the other focus group will be the Atoms-2-Products Centre for Doctoral Training in Sustainable Chemistry.
Once we have got something that works for the chemists and gathered some feedback we can then start capturing some of the green chemistry metrics. The challenge with this is that these metrics can be conflicting. So you might have a case where having a reaction in a high yield is a good thing and you might get a lot of what you want, but if you have to use a rare or expensive chemical in the reaction or a highly toxic or difficult to dispose of solvent you can see there will be various sorts of tensions, and we want some machine learning techniques that chemists can actually interact with and include aspects that are of importance to them. We also want them to be able to come back to us and tell us if they actually ended up doing the reaction a different way and feedback the results. We would like to accumulate a sort of community database, something like Wikipedia, but for sustainable chemistry and this will be embodied into the algorithms. And then more broadly it would become used widely across the academic and ultimately industrial communities.

Is the idea for the project to ultimately become a commercial venture?

My interview with the Royal Academy of Engineering actually had a venture capitalist on the panel but the value proposition is not really that we will create our own spin-out company based on commercialising the software. It’s much more about value for UK PLC in that we can make chemical using industries more efficient. For example, in the global pharmaceuticals industry, the annual cost of waste disposal associated with research and development (R&D) of pharmaceutical products and their production is 20 billion US dollars. So the idea is that we would be having an economic impact through getting the software into people’s hands to use. Our intention is to adopt an open-source, open innovation, open data type of approach, which I think has a better chance of being picked up and used, and it will be easier to get different perspectives and feedback on what is working and also people can then mould it to their own specific needs.

How important is machine learning in advancing sustainable chemistry?

It would be too much to say that science won’t advance if we don’t use machine learning, even very generally, but as the amount of data becomes much larger and as the scientific endeavour becomes much more widespread, it is harder for individuals to know everything they need to know, so even just models of data capture is clearly adding a lot of value. There is a lot of work in the field already, but it doesn’t have the unique sustainable chemistry angle that we have. For example, in the development of the drugs that might be used to treat COVID-19, a group of researchers published a better way of synthesizing key molecules, including dexamethasone, using cheaper components. So ultimately we hope that the algorithms will help people come up with more inventive ways and sustainable ways of producing drugs and chemicals but it is very much complementary. We can’t just press a button and solve it all.

What difference will the award make to your team on a day-to-day basis?

The award allows me to build a significantly larger team with some critical mass. It’s going to let me get into the technological side of a lot of nitty-gritty that we just wouldn’t have the capacity to do if it were a standard smaller-scale research project. So hopefully, it will let us cover enough of this ground to have an outcome with substantial impact with a growing user base but it also gives that space for some blue-sky thinking, with many more days open for deep thought, rather than squeezing the research in around the edges. The award allows me to focus all my time on the research. I enjoy teaching and I’ve also undertaken big management roles including Head of School (Chemistry) but it will be nice to have more time to think about research. I don’t expect to be less busy but it will be more focused and having the time for thinking deeply about science is so important.

Jonathan during his time as Head of the School of Chemistry.

How would you describe what you do to an ordinary person?

I work on computational chemistry, which is the process of doing calculations and modelling to support work in the chemistry labs, so turning theories and mathematics into software and using software to predict outcomes of experiments or properties of molecules that would be hard to do in real life. For example, in drug discovery, there’s huge automation and the big companies already do biological measurements on millions and millions of compounds, but even if it’s only 10 pence a measurement if you’re doing a million that is an expensive process. Narrowing down which molecules will be the most productive to make or test is partly what we work on.

What is your background? Were you originally an experimental chemist?

I’ve always worked on the theoretical and computational side of chemistry. Before I came to Nottingham and demonstrated in a teaching lab, the last time I had been in an experimental lab was as a second-year undergraduate. I’m not an experimental chemist at all, although I did order my first chemical in the last couple of years!

What are your inspirations and motivations?

I think it’s fundamentally just intellectual curiosity. I didn’t really set out on a mission to save the world or better mankind. I think the research and scientific endeavour for its own reasons is enormously culturally enriching for humanity never mind any tangible impact. But that said, I did my PhD with what’s now Cancer Research UK, and that was in the area of machine learning 25 years ago. Topical research areas can be a little bit cyclical in that sense. Many might think that Artificial Intelligence (AI) is a new thing, but it’s more of a renaissance. When I was doing my PhD, the film Terminator 2 was released and Arnold Schwarzenegger, the Terminator, had a neural network brain in the movie. So AI is not new and even then that wasn’t the first cycle of hype around AI. The magazine Fortune published in the US ran a feature right back in 1981 about the next revolution for drug discovery being computer-aided. So this has been promised every couple of decades for quite a long time. I guess the most recent cycle comes out of a 2012 competition around machine learning recognising images where there was a significant improvement and that ignited interest in deep learning. One of the big changes is the amount of data and some nice algorithmic developments. For playing games, like chess, where you know the rules and a computer can generate artificial data, you can generate billions and billions of examples and the computer can learn from that. But chemistry is much harder because you don’t know the rules fundamentally and you can’t generate the high fidelity data at the same rate you can for a simple game. So there’s plenty to do!

Jonathan with his research group outside the School of Chemistry pre-COVID

Are you open to colleagues across the Green Chemicals Beacon and the University collaborating with you on the project?

Yes absolutely, one of the key things I will do with my time will be in part building bigger community interactions with industry and getting some interesting uptake from different colleagues within the University and then outside as well so yes, that will be a big part of it.

Why is the award so exciting?
It’s an enormously exciting opportunity, I think because it’s brought together activities across the University, it’s highlighted the investment in high-performance computing, in the digital research strategy, the GSK Carbon Neutral Laboratories for Sustainable Chemistry and the Green Chemicals Beacon. It’s a great way of bringing those different aspects together.

You can find out more about Jonathan’s research on the Hirst Group website.

To find out more about the Green Chemicals Beacon and how our team of researchers are working to secure the low carbon economy of the future, please visit the website or follow us on Twitter @UoN_GCB

The post Machines can be green: how AI is making chemistry more sustainable. appeared first on Green Chemicals Beacon.

In the second of our blogs highlighting outreach projects undertaken by PhD students in the Centre for Doctoral Training in Sustainable Chemistry (CDT) during the lockdown, we hear from Joanna Lee, Alex Edmonds, Elliott Smith and Nicole Tsang who used the time away from the labs to conceive and produce a magazine based around their research topic.

How did you decide on the magazine format?

We wanted to design a magazine aimed at a non-scientific audience, with the incorporation of a children’s section so that the resource can be used by families.  The magazine format was designed to offer an incremental introduction to the topics we wanted to cover. The start of the magazine covers some basic information about chemistry and the importance of chemistry to society. After introducing the reader to some basic principles and concepts, we then felt we could explore some more complex topics which built on these foundations. Our group’s research is based on Late-Stage Functionalisation (LSF), which is quite a complex topic to introduce to a lay audience, therefore we included articles relating to LSF and our individual research toward the end. This also allowed us to discuss some of the most recent innovations and challenges in the field, which is probably some of the most interesting material.

For the title (Society, Sustainability & Synthesis), we thought it was an appropriate overview of the categories covered in the magazine. We felt it was important to relate our work and its uses to the reader, hence society, along with introducing them to some molecules they probably encounter every day. Sustainability is an important part of our research and our CDT in sustainable chemistry. Finally, synthesis is the focus of our research and where we apply LSF, and the more advanced techniques we discussed.

Extracts from the magazine introducing ‘Chemistry’ to the reader.

Why do you feel it is important to present complex scientific topics to a non-scientific audience? How did you decide what to include?

Explaining and presenting complex scientific topics to a non-scientific audience is important as it helps to promote the benefits of chemistry and develop their understanding of what scientists and researchers do behind the scenes. Sometimes chemistry has a negative reputation among the general public: ‘chemophobia’ is unfortunately still a widespread phenomenon. We felt it important to delve deeply into the subject to not only demonstrate its importance for society in general but also to explore some of the most recent developments and challenges highlighting the importance of research in the field. It’s important to explain the work we do to the public, as they are the ones who provide us with the money to carry out research. Ultimately the work is designed to benefit the public, whether that be directly in the products we invent or discover, or indirectly in the improvements to society and sustainability that come about from our research.

The choice of complex scientific articles was determined by our interest and theme Late-stage Functionalisation (LSF). We mention LSF a couple of times throughout the magazine which can be explained in a sentence or two in the earlier articles but is then expanded upon in its own article. We included articles to bring readers up to speed with the fundamental concepts needed to start understanding what we do in our research. The final few articles are more advanced, on the areas of research that we’re exploring in our own research projects.

This section of the magazine focuses on more complex topics including Late-Stage Functionalisation, the group’s research focus.

The design and layout of the magazine is eye-catching. Have you considered targeting a younger audience as well?

Although some of the articles – the more advanced stuff – will be inaccessible for school children, much of the other material could be simplified and explained to a younger audience. So adapting the magazine to be a suitable resource for schoolchildren is certainly a possibility. We have a small puzzle section at the end of the magazine that is suited for younger years along with the introduction of basic concepts such as global warming and safety in the laboratories. This could definitely be expanded upon to explain some other relevant concepts in chemistry.

Sections of the magazine aimed at a younger audience.

How do you plan to distribute the magazine?

We plan to distribute the magazine at outreach events, where the public can pick up and take the magazine home with them (obviously we don’t know when face-to-face outreach events will begin again given the current pandemic). We hope to send specific articles to other magazines for distribution such as university magazines like Impact and include a QR code to our complete magazine. From an online perspective, the CDT has a website and blog with links from twitter and we hope to publish articles online in blogs or websites which are scientific but are targeted to a lay audience.

What do you hope to achieve from this project?

We hoped to achieve the creation of a useful outreach resource to emphasise the importance of chemistry to society and introduce them to the chemistry around them. We give advice on how subtle changes in their life could help build a sustainable future and explain some concepts, for example how drugs are made, that people may want to know but resources out there already may be too black and white and/or aimed at scientists. We wanted to teach the lay audience some scientific terminology which is also reiterated by the crossword to show science can be fun and not just this confusing subject. Ideally, we hope we’ve provided the lay reader with some sort of intuitive understanding about the importance of chemistry and current challenges in the field along with how chemistry fits in with the goal of creating a more sustainable society.

The section aimed at a younger audience probably needs to be expanded upon to make a significant difference, but we would like to influence their opinion on science and encourage them to take science further, maybe even enjoy the subject a little more.

An introduction to molecules.

What skills have you learnt from this project? In what ways has it broadened your experience?

The project has definitely built upon our teamwork skills, having both individual and group deadlines and having to communicate effectively with each other. Writing for a lay audience is something we have done very little of in the past, therefore the project has helped us learn and practice this skill, especially when having to explain a complex idea. We also read a lot of articles while researching the magazine which was great as it allowed us to look at the bigger picture and consider how our research impacts the world outside of academia.

What is your background? What brings you to the Centre for Doctoral Training in Sustainable Chemistry (CDT) at Nottingham?

We each did a master’s degree in chemistry either at the University of Nottingham or Warwick and are specifically interested in organic chemistry.  The CDT appealed to us as sustainability is one of the most important challenges in many fields in the 21^st century, and we felt it was important to develop chemistry which fits in with the goal of developing ‘greener’ chemical processes. Nottingham’s profile as a world-leading university, as well as the positive experiences from our undergraduate studies (the three of us that studied here) led us to apply and continue studying.

Explaining concepts around plastics, waste and sustainability.

What are your aims for the future?

We aim to learn as much as we can during our PhD and hopefully publish some scientific papers. Career goals vary for us from working in industry perhaps for a pharmaceutical company in the research and development sector or heading toward academia. Some of us also aren’t 100% sure but we do hope to apply the unique skills we develop in the CDT toward whatever we decide to pursue.

Do you have any advice for young scientists?

Science will be key to solving some of the most pressing challenges faced by society in the future, so there’s never been a more crucial time for young people to go into science. We would advise them to work hard and focus on what they are passionate about. Always ask questions to keep learning because it is good to be inquisitive. Setting little goals can boost productivity and give you a whole new energy when you achieve them. We would certainly encourage young scientists to consider a career in chemistry, as innovations in this field will be key to developing a greener and more sustainable society. Also, science is such a broad subject, you’d be surprised how many opportunities science can open up for you, keep exploring a variety of interests and you may come across the particular topic you love.

You can access a copy of  Society, Sustainability & Synthesis here.

To find out more about the Green Chemicals Beacon and how our team of researchers are working to secure the low carbon economy of the future, please visit the website or follow us on Twitter @UoN_GCB

The post Our chemical romance: why society needs Chemistry. appeared first on Green Chemicals Beacon.

Dr Omar Aboelazayem joined the University of Nottingham in November 2019 as a Technical Specialist in Sustainable Chemical Processing in the Department of Chemical and Environmental Engineering aligned to the Green Chemicals Beacon. In this interview, he talks to Jo Gregory about his inspirations, his approach to work during the pandemic and how his research is tackling global challenges.

Could you tell me a bit about your research career?

As a research intern at Universitat Rovira i Virgili in Tarragona, Spain, I worked on a project which looked at producing biodiesel from sewage sludge. This inspired me to explore research focused on converting waste into biodiesel and under the supervision of Professor Nour El-Gendy at The British University in Egypt (BUE) my research graduation project looked at biodiesel production from waste cooking oil (WCO) using eggshells as a catalyst. I found that using household WCO was more effective than industrial WCO having observed difficulties in converting the high acidity industrial WCO into biodiesel using conventional methods.

While working as a teaching assistant in the Chemical Engineering Department at BUE, I started my PhD research in Professor Basu Saha’s research group at London South Bank University (LSBU) in 2015 under joint supervision with Professor Mamdouh Gadalla from BUE. My research focused on the valorisation (reusing, recycling, composting) of high acidity Egyptian WCO collected from local industries. We successfully developed a sustainable approach for high acidity WCO conversion into high-quality biodiesel using supercritical methanolysis. I then used my preliminary PhD results to assist my supervisors in successfully applying for a Newton Institutional Research Fund between the UK and Egypt through the British Council and we were granted a fund for my research project. I also worked as Postdoctoral Research Assistant at LSBU where I worked with new students who developed my PhD findings.

My research interests include but are not limited to; biomass valorisation technologies into biofuels and value-added chemicals, process optimisation and process integration.

How would you explain your research to an ordinary person?

The demand for fossil fuels (coal, oil, gas) for energy and to produce chemicals has risen dramatically along with the increasing growth of population and metropolitan industrial societies. This has led to environmental impacts including air pollution, global warming, climate change and water contamination.

My research is focused on developing sustainable, green and economically viable technologies which will convert biomass waste (made from renewable resources) into biofuels and value-added chemicals. I am aiming to provide a significant impact in the biofuels field in order to reduce the reliance on fossil fuels and allow us to have a greener future.

How does being part of Green Chemicals help you achieve your goals?

My previous work has been focused on thermochemical conversion technologies and joining the Green Chemicals Beacon is a great opportunity for me to advance my experience in biochemical processing for the production of biofuels and value-added chemicals.

The Beacon provides me with access to explore advanced research facilities in this field and being part of the technical staff has improved my technical skills. I am looking forward to making a significant contribution in the area of biochemical downstream processing.

The University of Nottingham is also providing me with an excellent opportunity for professional development. I have recently joined the Teaching and Learning Development Programme (TLDP) of the Nottingham Recognition Scheme (NRS) and successfully achieved the status of Fellow in Higher Education Academy (FHEA). I am also working towards chartered chemical engineer membership from the Institute of Chemical Engineering (IChemE).

What current projects are you working on?

I am currently working on a UKRI funded project in collaboration with BIOME Technologies researching sustainable bio-based monomer production processes based on a novel synthetic biotechnology platform. This will be implemented in a new generation of highly functional and biodegradable bioplastic polymers (plastics). I have a key role in supporting the research on the development of an efficient downstream process to separate the targeted monomers from the fermentation broth. I also support the teaching activities for the chemical engineering undergraduates and MSc students in the pilot-scale laboratories in my department.

How has COVID affected your research?/How have you found working from home rather than the lab during a pandemic?

As my current research is mainly lab-based work, I have considered the lockdown as an opportunity to enrich my theoretical knowledge in biochemical processing through literature. In addition, it was a good chance for me to proceed in my professional development and I achieved the status of Fellow in Higher Education Academy (FHEA) during the lockdown.

I also expanded my previous PhD work by designing an integrated approach to recovering the residual waste heat of the biodiesel process using an organic Rankine cycle, which has been recently published in Renewable Energy Journal (simulation-based work). I have also contributed to a collaborative research fund proposal with my previous PhD supervisors to be granted by the British Council through the Newton Fund Impact Scheme (NFIS)  representing the Green Chemicals Beacon as an associated partner.

How did you become interested in engineering? Where do you get your inspirations from?

I grew up in a family full of medical doctors and dentists who expected me to follow them into being a doctor. However, my favourite subjects at school were mathematics and chemistry. I remember that I used to enjoy mathematics class where our teacher called me “king of math”. My high school in Jubail Industrial City, Saudi Arabia was very close to the chemical plants of the SABIC petrochemicals company. The huge and complicated processes of SABIC industries grasped my attention and curiosity and were the main reason for my decision to study chemical and process engineering.

Do you have any advice for young engineers?

Engineers are innovative problem solvers. If you are interested in figuring out applicable solutions to complicated problems, you will most likely enjoy engineering!. From my experience, engineers should be like a sponge that continues to receive information and learn new skills. Engineers require continuous learning to be up to date with the accelerated pace of knowledge.

What is your greatest career moment so far?

Being shortlisted to present my research in the House of Commons, UK Parliament as part of STEM for Britain 2018 is one of my greatest career moments. It was such an honour for me to be shortlisted as one of the best 45 researchers in the UK. It was great to present my work to the members of parliament and Fellows of the Royal Academy of Engineering. The discussion with them was very fruitful and has opened my mind to the importance of ensuring your research is feasible and economically viable. I also learnt how policy-makers and investors approach and understand academic research projects and what we should highlight to grasp their attention.

You can read Omar’s latest collaborative research article which presents an integrated approach to recover the residual waste heat of biodiesel production process via organic Rankine cycle (ORC) in the Renewable Energy Journal.

To find out more about the Green Chemicals Beacon and how our team of researchers are working to secure the low carbon economy of the future, please visit the website or follow us on Twitter @UoN_GCB

The post The goal is a greener future: An interview with Dr Omar Aboelazayem appeared first on Green Chemicals Beacon.

With the enforced closure of the University due to COVID resulting in limited access to labs, a group of first year PhD students from the EPSRC Centre for Doctoral Training in Sustainable Chemistry faced an uncertain start to their studies, specifically the need to rethink their end of year project on the circular economy. Adapting brilliantly to new constraints they identified a gap in existing resources for secondary school students – engaging and accessible materials that help explain the concept. They spent the next few months researching, producing and evaluating a series of educational materials that could be used by teachers in the classroom as well as activities that can be done at home. Luke Woodliffe, Amy-Louise Johnston, Harriet Fowler and Thomas Butler talk to Jo Gregory about the project and the importance of introducing concepts around sustainability at a young age.

What is the circular economy? 

The circular economy presents the idea that nothing should become waste, and everything should be kept in a ‘useful state’ for as long as possible through reducing, reusing, repairing, and recycling objects rather than disposing of them. This is proposed as an alternative to “make-take-dispose” processes currently found in nearly all industries across the world. For example, rather than accepting an upgrade to a new mobile phone as soon as the network provider offers one, and leaving the ‘old’ mobile phone in a drawer unused, a circular economy would promote that:
• A mobile phone should be used for as long as it is functional
• If the phone breaks the owner should try to have it fixed
• If the whole phone cannot be fixed different components of the phone, such as the screen, should be used to refurbish another broken mobile phone. The phone should have been designed by the manufacturer to make this as easy as possible to do.
• When there are no useful parts left of the phone it should be disposed of correctly, sending it to a WEEE (Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment) recycling centre to be recycled. These recycled materials would likely go into manufacturing a new phone.

Diagrams from the website illustrating the linear vs circular economy.

Why is it important to teach children (and adults) about the circular economy?

The interest around a circular economy is growing exponentially, in both research and business communities, and has been highlighted as an area which can make a huge impact on sustainability. For this reason, we think that students should be introduced to these topics early in their education so they can become future leaders in the field of a circular economy.

Who are the materials aimed at and why did you choose this particular audience?

Currently, our main audience is secondary school pupils, particularly around GCSE age. At this point, some of the principles of the circular economy start to show up in more detail in the subject-specific curricula. We hope the resources we have developed will allow pupils to go deeper into some of the issues around waste and the circular economy and motivate students to want to make a difference in these fields. Having said that, many of the materials can be adapted by teachers to suit different ages and learning environments, so should find broad application.

The website includes home activities as well as teaching resources.

What do you hope to achieve from this project?

We hope to increase the understanding of the circular economy and its importance, but we appreciate that scientific papers aren’t the most accessible resources for most people. As such, it seemed appropriate to help to spread this information using an easily accessible, free, and easy to understand medium. The creation of a website with relevance to the school curriculum and fun practicals was an attractive way to deliver this. We hope that the resources will inform students, teachers, and parents alike.

Lesson plans cover several topics including the circular economy and food waste.

What is your background? What brings you to the Centre for Doctoral Training (CDT) in Sustainable Chemistry at Nottingham?

Luke: I studied organic and inorganic chemistry at the University of Cambridge, and have also worked in research and development in the pharmaceutical industry for a few years after graduating. I applied for the CDT wanting to research into areas around sustainability which can make a positive difference to society and the environment.

Hattie: I recently completed a Masters degree at Durham University in chemistry with a background in organic chemistry and sustainability. I chose to apply to the CDT at Nottingham to further my research into sustainability and the circular economy.

Tom: I did my integrated Masters degree here at Nottingham, where I had the chance to specialise in medicinal chemistry and natural product synthesis through my year in industry and masters projects respectively. I chose to stay with the university after graduation because of the excellent department and the quality of research here, the CDT provided the opportunity to focus on sustainability and seemed like the right choice for me to develop into a well-rounded scientist.

Amy: I also completed a Masters degree in chemistry, at the University of Southampton. Between finishing my degree and starting my PhD, I worked at a large international academic publisher, focusing on Environment and Sustainability publications. The CDT gives me a chance to combine several of my academic interests, allowing me to learn more about the circular economy and sustainability whilst also carrying out my own novel research in the area.

The GSK Carbon-Neutral Laboratory for Sustainable Chemistry, which is home to the CDT.

How has COVID affected your studies and research?
Luke: It has meant significantly reduced time in the lab for experimental work, moving research online for the time being.

Hattie: The pandemic has put a halt on lab-based activities for now, therefore, with much more time spent online, we decided to create an educational website based on different areas of the circular economy we have learnt about.

Tom: The lab closure has meant a significant amount of time has been spent working from home. Online research is something I had little experience of prior to the pandemic, but it is a skill that I am glad to have developed over this time.

Amy: COVID has certainly affected the first year of the CDT, as being unable to carry out lab work has meant lots more desk-based research. Alongside lots of reading around my PhD topic, it has presented an opportunity to develop new skills in areas, such as creating educational materials and a website, I otherwise would not have had the chance to do.

Infographics produced by the students outlining key concepts.

What are your aims for the future?
Luke: To make a positive contribution to the research area of carbon capture and to continue research with a role either in academia or industry.

Hattie: To help contribute to a sustainable future through further industrial research.

Tom: To enable the more sustainable development of pharmaceuticals both through my PhD and in my subsequent career.

Amy: To keep developing ideas around how chemists can contribute to sustainability and the circular economy, then apply and share these principles in any future role.

Infographics produced by the students with key concepts and statistics.

Do you have any advice for young scientists?

Luke: When thinking about an area for research, find a field you enjoy and find meaningful, and always try to keep things in perspective.

Hattie: Be passionate and ask lots of questions!

Tom: Try to do something that you enjoy and have a passion for. Learn from others who are older than you by asking lots of questions, the vast majority of people in science love to discuss their research and experiences!

Amy: Question everything! And, do not worry if you don’t understand something the first time. Nearly all areas of science contain complex ideas which are not straightforward, so if you don’t understand something find someone who does and ask them to explain it.

You can access the resources at circulareconomyresources.com. To find out more about the EPSRC Centre for Doctoral Training in Sustainable Chemistry please visit the website.

To find out more about the Green Chemicals Beacon and how our team of researchers are working to secure the low carbon economy of the future, please visit the website or follow us on Twitter @UoN_GCB

The post A different class: an education in the circular economy appeared first on Green Chemicals Beacon.

The nationwide lockdown due to the spread of COVID-19 saw an impressive response from the chemicals industry and research community, both from companies that continued through lockdown and had to quickly adapt their working practices as well as organisations and universities like the University of Nottingham who rapidly closed laboratories for all but essential research. Researchers were suddenly adapting to working from home and communicating with their team in a virtual environment. But it’s arguable that an even bigger challenge has come in planning towards the reopening of laboratories with the many new restrictions and guidelines in place.

Our recent webinar on this topic as part of the Sustainable Chemicals Industry Forum was an opportunity to hear from representatives across the chemicals industry who reflected on the experiences of reopening and operating chemistry facilities within the current Government guidelines. They also shared the approaches and learnings that have come out of this work.

We were delighted to be joined by Dr Selina Ambrose, Technical Manager at Promethean Particles. The company was established in 2007 based on the research of Professor Ed Lester (Chemical Engineering, University of Nottingham) . Selina oversees all of the technical work on nanomaterial development and scale-up; including their research and development projects as well as new product development. She shared the following insights with us.

How did Promethean Particles respond to lockdown? 

After the Government announcement about lockdown, we decided to close our site on Tuesday 24^th March and, where possible, staff began working from home. All production, orders and experimental aspects of our R&D projects were put on hold and our customers were informed of the status. From the 1^st of April, a portion of our staff who were unable to work from home were placed on furlough.
As the Government announced in mid-May that some restrictions were easing and that some businesses could re-open (e.g. manufacturing) we planned out how we could re-open safely. I worked with our Technical Director to map out the measures and procedures we needed to put in place to do this while following Government guidelines and completing our own risk assessments. Staff were consulted during this process to ensure everyone was happy and comfortable with the measures being proposed. After all our plans were put in motion, we successfully re-opened our site on the 26^th May and resumed our operations.

What approaches your organisation has taken to ensure social distanced working particularly in chemistry labs/operations facilities?

As a small company, we have a relatively small headcount (11) and our site is quite large (3 industrial units merged together), so we’re fortunate that we have quite a lot of physical space in the first instance. However, to ensure social distancing, we decided to split the on-site team into two shifts; the first working 6:30-12:30 and the second 13:00-19:00. The 30 minutes in between allows a ‘handover’ between shift leaders while minimising contact between the majority of the teams. The two groups alternate shift times each week (e.g. Group 1 would start at 6:30 on one week, then be on the afternoon shift on the following week) so that it is fair to everyone.
While deciding the way the team would be split, considerations needed to be made to ensure a trained first aider is present on-site at all times, as well as ensuring there is a balance of senior/junior staff. Where deliveries or operations would require a forklift, we also had to make sure this is planned so that the trained staff would be on hand to prevent any delays.

Our office spaces were the main area where re-configuration was required so this involved moving some staff into other office space, such as the meeting room which wouldn’t be used for on-site meetings anyway as we’ve moved to online meetings (Teams, Zoom etc.). Of course, where staff could work from home, this was implemented to further minimise the number of people in the building at any one time.

What were the biggest challenges and how did you overcome them?

Not a huge challenge but it was important to make sure each individual staff member was happy and comfortable returning to work. Everybody’s personal situation is different, whether that’s their own health (physical and mental), the health of members of their household, or whether their commute to work would put them at risk.
We needed to consider if our staff are, or live with anyone, considered ‘vulnerable’ or ‘extremely vulnerable’; and whether they need to rely on public transport to get to work. These personal issues may not be something an individual would be comfortable speaking up about in a group meeting with all staff. So, to overcome this, I (as the Technical Manager) had individual phone calls or meetings via Teams to talk to staff about their personal situations, help them feel comfortable about returning to work, and to give them an opportunity to raise any concerns one-to-one.
Another ‘challenge’ was making sure we were implementing practical, workable solutions and not just putting measures or protocols in place ‘to be seen to be doing the right thing’. For example, we thought about bringing in our external cleaning contractors more regularly, every day or several times a week. However, in practice, this would mean more people physically in the building so social distancing becomes more difficult. In addition, our cleaning company sends different cleaners each time; if this was the case in this scenario, it would increase the risk through contact between more different people – something we’re actively trying to avoid. As such, we kept our cleaning rota as before, once a week, and asked the cleaning company to make sure the same person came every week. Our shift leaders would instead clean down high-touch areas (e.g. door handles) at the start and end of their shifts with disinfectant. Furthermore, as members of staff, they would know which areas are used most often better than our external cleaner.

Have there been any adjustments since opening or unexpected problems?

No, I’m really pleased to say that everything has been running smoothly. Our staff have been brilliant in adapting to the new measures and procedures put in place, and are glad to be back at work (it sounds like the novelty of being at home on furlough wore off quite quickly!) It has been strange to not have the usual social aspect of our team, either doing a pub quiz together after work or even eating lunch together, but I think everybody recognises that we need to do this in the short term to get through this quickly and return to normal.
Every week, I’ve been checking in with staff to see if their situation has changed (home life or commute) or if there are any issues with the way we’re working, but no issues so far.

What are your key learnings? Is there anything that has changed for the better?

Video calls (Teams and Zoom) are well used now! While having customers and visitors on-site can definitely have its benefits because we can give them a tour of our facilities, which helps them to better understand our technology and capabilities, we may think twice about whether face-to-face meetings are really necessary or if it’s more efficient, effective, and better for the environment, to have a video call instead. We have customers in the US, Europe or in Asia (Japan/South Korea) where previously, we would mostly communicate via email and phone calls. The pandemic has made us use video conferencing platforms so much more and it has actually enhanced our customer relationships (better to see someone over video than just emailing). I think that’s something that has changed for the better and will continue.

If you would like to find out more about Promethean Particles you can contact them at info@proparticles.co.uk or follow them on Twitter at @ProParticles

The Sustainable Chemicals Industry Forum was set up with the aim of assisting companies in developing and implementing more sustainable chemical processes and products. For more information please contact Nick Bennett Nicholas.Bennett@nottingham.ac.uk 

To find out more about the Green Chemicals Beacon and how our team of researchers are working to secure the low-carbon economy of the future, please visit the website or follow us on Twitter @UoN_GCB

The post Reopening laboratories: sharing best practice appeared first on Green Chemicals Beacon.

Kate Haigh is a research fellow based in the Faculty of Engineering and a member of the Green Chemicals Beacon. 

In this interview, Kate talks to Jo Gregory about her role, her motivations and how her research ensures sustainability projects are financially viable as well as beneficial to the environment.

What is your role here at Nottingham?

I am a Research Fellow in the Techno-Economic Analysis of Renewable Chemicals and Fuels Production

Could you tell me a bit about your research career?

I started out doing research for a drinking water company. After a few years, I had this idea that I would like to follow a more business-focused career and spend a few years working for a large engineering company. This experience made me realise that I would prefer a career in research, preferably focused on technology that would reduce our impact on the environment. This led to me doing a PhD at Loughborough University, investigating options for more environmentally benign production of biodiesel.
Once I received my PhD I returned to South Africa, where I grew up, to do post-doctoral research at Stellenbosch University. It was at this time that my research started to focus on the techno-economic assessment of possible biorefineries which convert plant material to green chemicals. I found it interesting to learn more about options to implement biorefineries, particularly in South Africa. I also carried out a project to apply this type of assessment to wineries and identify opportunities to make more effective use of winery waste.

How would you explain your research to an ordinary person?

I have been investigating technologies to make chemicals from plants with a focus on finding routes that are financially viable and beneficial to the environment.

Why Green Chemicals? What would you like to accomplish while you’re here? How does being part of Green Chemicals help you achieve your goals?

It is a great opportunity to work at a top UK University with some leading people in the field of green chemicals. I am currently working on a project to develop a tool to better assess opportunities make green chemicals that I hope will help other researchers to choose sensible processes and chemicals to investigate and develop.

How does your research affect ordinary people?

If we can develop financially viable processes this means that ordinary people will benefit from improvements to the environment without too many costs in the form of higher taxes or prices.

What current projects are you working on?

Currently, my main project is developing a tool to assess processes to convert plants to chemicals. The focus is on looking at projects in the early stages to determine if a proposed project has the potential to be financially viable. The scientific literature has numerous examples of processes which have been proposed for making green chemicals but on closer investigation, it becomes clear that these processes do not make sense from an engineering and commercial perspective. Ultimately this tool should make it possible to focus the work on processes that have the potential to reach commercial implementation.

How are you finding working from home rather than the lab during a pandemic?

Working from home is more peaceful because my shared office would get noisy at times so it is easier to focus. It has also been very stressful at times because I am new to the area and new to the University so I was just getting to know a few people when the lockdown started. Fortunately, my research group was quick to set up a weekly social chat on Teams which has been very good for developing my network. I have found that establishing a regular routine is helpful for managing the boundaries between work and home. My alarm is set for the same time as when I was working. Although these days I like to make time for some exercise in the middle of the day.

How did you become interested in engineering? Where do you get your inspirations from?

Maths and Science were some of my best subjects when I was school so something in that field always appealed to me. It probably helped that my parents encouraged me to have a career and my Dad was an engineer. It felt like a logical and natural choice. I also attended a week on engineering courses offered by my local university and loved it. Over time I have come to realise that I find learning how things work and problem-solving very rewarding.

Do you have any advice for young engineers?

Go for it. There will be times when you find the work challenging or scary but if you are really interested and committed then you will figure it out.

What is your greatest career moment so far?

Getting my PhD because it made my Mom really proud.

To find out more about the Green Chemicals Beacon and how our team of researchers are working to secure the low-carbon economy of the future, please visit the website or follow us on Twitter @UoN_GCB

The post Statistics for sustainability: An interview with Dr Kate Haigh appeared first on Green Chemicals Beacon.