Description

Towards a More Sustainable and Circular Society: Dreams Become Reality with Chemistry and Catalysis

Every day we hear about global warming and related actions to better protect the earth's climate. We need to look for more sustainable alternatives for making our fuels, chemicals and materials, but this new way of working will take time as our society is heavily dependent on fossil resources, including crude oil and natural gas. Sunlight can provide an important solution for this. This can be done indirectly by using biomass, such as cellulose, lignin and chitin, which can be converted into new chemical building blocks in a so-called bio-refinery, but a more challenging solution is to convert CO₂ and water indirectly and directly into so-called solar fuels. In this way, CO₂ is put to good use and we may start to imitate plants. Catalysis plays a crucial role in each of these more sustainable routes to manufacture the fuels, chemicals, and materials of the future. In this lecture, you will be taken into the wonderful world of sustainable chemistry and catalysis, where the working principles of crude oil, bio and solar refineries will be discussed, including the possibilities, limitations and the current state of affairs. What will the refinery of the future look like and what will it take to build such future infrastructures? The lecture also discusses the chemical recycling of plastics, and new ways to use plastics, in addition to biomass, as a raw material for the chemical industry. Circularity is also central here. The lecture ends with the implication of such research for the development of new academic tracks, and the need to educate future changemakers, which are both connectors and innovators, thereby capable to translate scientific results in societally accepted technological solutions to accomplish a more sustainable and circular society. 

Short Curriculum Vitae of Bert Weckhuysen: Bert Weckhuysen (55), a Distinguished University Professor at Utrecht University (The Netherlands), received his Master and PhD degrees from Leuven University (Belgium) in 1991 and 1995. He has worked as a postdoc at Lehigh University (USA) and Texas A&M University (USA). He has (co-) authored more than 700 scientific journal publications and has received many scientific awards, including the Royal Dutch Chemical Society Gold Medal, Netherlands Catalysis and Chemistry Award, Emmett Award in Fundamental Catalysis, International Catalysis Award, Bourke Award from the Royal Society of Chemistry, Spinoza Award from the Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research, Tanabe Prize in Acid-Base Catalysis, and most recently the Chemistry Europe Award. He is a Knight in the Order of the Netherlands Lion, and an elected member of a.o., the Royal Dutch Academy of Sciences (KNAW), the Royal Flemish Academy of Belgium for Sciences and Arts (KVAB), and the European Academy of Sciences.