The Way to Green Chemistry

Green chemistry is a more sustainable way of doing chemistry and chemical engineering whose priority is to minimize or eliminate the use and generation of hazardous substances. Paul Anastas and John Warner released in 1998 the so call 12 Principles of Green Chemistry that boosted the scientific community to ensure and benefit the health of our planet and its people. The economic viability of this road map focusses on the prevention of waste, use of renewable feedstook, conservation of energy or replacement of hazaourdous substances. The research interests of our group go hand in hand with this guideline. Main topics regard: i) preparation of highly efficient and selective heterogeneous catalysts, ii) synthesis of value-added chemicals from biomass feedstock, iii) reactions under continuous flow conditions, iv) synthesis of innovative materials to be used as both catalysts themselves or catalyst supports; eg. borate monoliths, meso/macroporous monoliths, v) synthesis of benign solvents. The goal we pursue is increasing the sustainability of the processes. A meticulous combination of the above mention actions will lead to the highest yields and will allow for process intensification, which can bring benefits in terms of reduced equipment size, energy consumption or waste generation, and of improved process safety. Regarding waste generation, management of plastic pollution has become a real challenge since 400 MT of plastic waste are produced every year. In this sense, our latest efforts focus on the valorisation of plastic waste via metal-catalysed depolymerisation.