The School of Chemistry at the University of Birmingham currently has 27
research groups, and many of them work in the area of sustainability.
This has many aspects and can include the sustainable use of
resources, the search for greener processes, and recycling.
Carbon dioxide is an important heat-trapping greenhouse gas, and it's accumulation in the
atmosphere results in an increase of the global temperature. Global climate change
has already had observable effects on the environment. Glaciers have shrunk, rivers
and lakes are drying up, more intense heatwaves and the hurricanes are
getting stronger and more intense. Worldwide it is recognized that recycling
carbon dioxide to fuels and other high added value chemicals is a key element towards
a sustainable, low-carbon economy. At the School of Chemistry in Birmingham
we aim at developing novel catalysts and electrochemical methods for the
electrochemical recycling of CO2 emissions into liquid fuels with high
efficiency and selectivity. Our research tries to mimic nature and
produce artificial photosynthesis in which we can produce liquid fuels from a
combination of sunlight, water, and carbon dioxide. CO2 recycling will play
a vital role in worldwide efforts to limit global warming and will allow
us to deliver on a fifth of the emission reduction needed by 2050.
My research is focused in the area of plastics. Plastic waste is a huge problem that faces
society and there are multiple solutions that are going to have to be applied
to change the way that we deal with plastic waste. My group are focussed in
two main areas. The first is in looking at using sustainable feedstocks to replace
current petrochemical feedstocks. In particular we're focused on creating new
sustainable materials from plant-based resources that have the same properties
as the plastics that we're already using. The second is in chemical recycling and
chemical upcycling of plastics to create added value chemicals, additives, and
materials. Mechanical recycling leads to degradation of the polymer chains.
This leads to a downgrading in the performance of that material.
Chemical recycling means that we can depolymerize the plastic back to its
constituent monomers, which then when re-polymerized gives you the
virgin material that has the same performance as it had at the start.
The European Chemical Society recently published a periodic table with a traffic
light system denoting how at risk certain elements were of short supply.
And of the 92 naturally occurring elements less than half, only 44, were
actually rated as green. Many of these elements are actually used in modern
technologies. For instance, if you have a smartphone in your pocket
you are actually holding perhaps 25 to 30 elements, and as many as
20 of those might actually be at risk of short supply. In the
Birmingham Centre for Strategic Elements and Critical Materials we're taking a four
pronged approach to try and address issues of materials criticality: one is
regulation, one is reduction of the materials through more efficient design.
The more chemical ones are of course trying to replace the materials, and very
important as we go forward in the future of course will be recycling. A good
example of one of our projects is the ReLiB project, which is dedicated
towards setting up a UK lithium-ion battery recycling industry. At the moment
there are actually no facilities in the UK for recycling lithium-ion batteries,
so that not only potentially causes an issue of waste and
safe decommissioning of the vehicle batteries, but it also gives a big opportunity
to recover these elements and actually start up a manufacturing facility in the UK.