University of York, Green Chemistry Centre of Excellence (P1)

 Prof James Clark, Prof Ray Marriott, Dr Mark Gronnow

The centre will be looking at the extraction, fractionation and applications for valuable plant metabolites from a range of renewable feedstocks from Europe and Brazil (e.g. straw, husk and bagasse) extracted using clean solvents such as supercritical CO₂ and other “eco-solvents” including those derived from biomass. The extraction will be optimised and extract yields and chemical composition will also be studied. Microwave activation in the absence of bulk water and especially in the presence of microwave receptors can be used to convert lignin to solid and liquid fuels of high calorific value. We will investigate the optimisation of this process in terms of producing biofuels and valuable aromatic chemical compounds.

 Figure 1 – Interior view of the new biorefinery pilot laboratory