Sustainable Chemistry through Catalysis and Process Intensification †
Johan Gadolin Process Chemistry Centre, Laboratory of Industrial Chemistry and Reaction Engineering, Åbo Akademi University, 20500 Turku, Finland
†
Presented at the International Conference EcoBalt 2023 “Chemicals & Environment”, Tallinn, Estonia, 9–11 October 2023.
Proceedings 2023, 92(1), 76; https://doi.org/10.3390/proceedings2023092076
Published: 13 December 2023
(This article belongs to the Proceedings of International Conference EcoBalt 2023 "Chemicals & Environment")
The shift away from fossil resources is revolutionizing our industrial carbon sources, and the developments in legislation demand increased overall efficiency in processes and emission abatement. Catalysis plays a key role in enabling the green transition in the chemical process industry and environmental protection. They also act as a bridge between chemical reactions and reaction mechanisms and moving from the molecular to the process scale. Besides enhancing reaction rates, increasing selectivity plays a key role, and both of these factors are tightly linked also to the process design and optimization for which modern process intensification provides good tools. The current presentation displays three examples of combining heterogeneous catalysis with process intensification for wastewater treatment and the direct conversion of CO2 recently studied by our research group. The wastewater treatment includes removing hemicelluloses from dilute biorefinery effluents with the help of catalytic aqueous-phase reforming in a continuous reactor [1,2,3,4]. The second case focuses on the removal of pharmaceuticals from communal wastewaters by combining ozonation with heterogeneous catalysis in a semi-batch reactor operating at ambient pressure [5,6,7]. In the case focusing on gas-phase processing, CO2 is converted to renewable natural gas utilizing a bi-functional catalytic material in a periodically operating continuous reactor concept [8,9,10,11,12]. Chromatography was used as the main analysis method in all of the experiments. High yields and good selectivity were obtained in all of the cases, and the next steps are related to process optimization, stability testing, and preparative studies for scale-up studies. The obtained results display significant potential for green process technology and process efficiency by combining catalyst development with process design to be able to efficiently utilize effluent streams and minimize the effects on the environment.
Funding
This research was financially supported by the Academy of Finland, Business Finland, and Tekniikan Edistämissäätiö.
Institutional Review Board Statement
Not applicable.
Informed Consent Statement
Not applicable.
Data Availability Statement
Data is available via the cited articles and from the corresponding author.
Conflicts of Interest
The author declares no conflict of interest.
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Grénman, H. Sustainable Chemistry through Catalysis and Process Intensification. Proceedings 2023, 92, 76. https://doi.org/10.3390/proceedings2023092076
AMA Style
Grénman H. Sustainable Chemistry through Catalysis and Process Intensification. Proceedings. 2023; 92(1):76. https://doi.org/10.3390/proceedings2023092076
Chicago/Turabian StyleGrénman, Henrik. 2023. "Sustainable Chemistry through Catalysis and Process Intensification" Proceedings 92, no. 1: 76. https://doi.org/10.3390/proceedings2023092076
