Sustainability is an incredibly powerful word which offers huge difersity in definition yet is ubiquitously linked to the so-called United Nations Sustainable Development Goals or SDGs. In the context of sustainable chemistry, this could include the delivery of atom efficient processes catalysed by earth abumbant elements at temperatures and pressures close to STP. On the other hand it could also relate to the origin of raw materials, the minimization of synthetic steps or indeed the nature of the solvent employed to enable a reaction to proceed. If we step back and consider the breadth and depth of activities that typically identify as being contributors to “sustainable chemistry” then we as a community may be surprised, it is vast! We could openly challenge colleagues within our own universities with the question, “do you lead a laboratory to make processes worse?” The answer is almost always “no!” so by definition aren’t we all conducting research or teaching that contributes to both sustainable chemistry and indeed the greater achievement of the United Nations SDGs?

The Centre for Sustainable Chemistry (CSC) at Nottingham is a nationally supported centre of excellence that aims to drive innovation and application of methods that will reduce the carbon intensity of chemistry and the chemicals using communities that we engage with. This lecture will give insight into activities which all contribute to the realisation of chemistry that can be demonstrated to be more sustainable. I will use case studies that will span many orders of magnitude in terms of impact and scale.
Research activities delivered within the CSC span topics including feedstocks, solvents, catalysis and materials. This lecture will include an overview of key objectives of the Carbon Neutral Laboratories and cover projects that span both fundamental research and industrialy aligned activity delivered as part of core critical-mass projects and our nationally funded EPSRC centre for doctoral training in sustainable chemistry.

Peter Licence

Appearances