Accessibility statement

Research

Design for Reuse / Degradation / Recovery

Renewable Feedstocks

Green Synthesis

Sustainable Technologies

 

Publications

Facilities

Research Group Members

Led by Professor Helen Sneddon (Director) and Dr Avtar Matharu (Deputy Director), the Green Chemistry Centre of Excellence (GCCE) has a long-established reputation for working closely with industry and fostering interdisciplinary research through close collaboration with biology, environment and geography, chemical engineering and other disciplines. Our Industrial Engagement Facility (IEF) includes a hot desk area, laboratory space and access to specialist instrumentation dedicated to visiting industrial partners geared to their specific applied research interests. In addition, an industrial engagement space, a large multi-function, seminar/lecture room and meeting room facilitating one-to-one discussions, small seminars as well as larger events.

The research areas of the GCCE cover a broad spectrum of subjects and involve both fundamental and applied research. We concentrate on developing new applications and providing practical solutions for existing industrial processes. This frequently involves improvement of the processes in terms of their environmental performance and efficiency through the application of renewable feedstocks, green synthetic methods, sustainable technologies and consideration of the end of life of a product be that through designing for re-use, recovery or degradation. 

The group works at the frontiers of green chemistry research in the following areas:

Renewable Feedstocks

Renewable Feedstocks

  • Utilising biomass and carbon dioxide as alternative (and sustainable) carbon sources for the chemicals industry.
  • We combine these sustainable feedstocks with catalytic transformations using processes that require little or no energy input to develop sustainable alternatives for the production of important chemicals.

Green Synthesis

Green Synthesis

  • Designing and developing more benign reaction protocols for common synthetic transformations.
  • Using computer models to predict the effects of solvents in extractions, organic chemistry, cleaning, material development etc.

Sustainable Technologies

  • Exploring where technologies such as enzyme catalysis, microwave processing, flow chemistry, and mechanochemistry can provide tangible sustainability benefits over current manufacturing protocols.

Design for Reuse/Degradation/Recovery

  • Designing an array of sustainable products such as monomers and polymers, solvents, surfactants, anti-oxidants and chelators. which can (depending on requirements) be recovered or biodegrade.
  • Recovery of valuable and/or harmful materials from legacy processes where safer recovery was not designed in - including phytoremediation, and the R2LiB project for recovery of polyvinylidenefluoride from Lithium batteries aiding the recycling of this promising technology.