SOCUPOLS
Hi! My name is Marco Noè, welcome to the website where you can find information and news about the project I am currently carrying out: SOCUPOLs !
SOCUPOLs stands for "Supported Organo-Catalysts for the Upgrade of bioderived Polyols"
All the people I talk with ask me: "What are you doing? Please make it understandable"
That's the hard part!
After many years working on a subject is difficult to find the right words to explain what you are doing to people that works on completely different fields. However it is important to undeline that look at your research "from the outside" helps a lot! Hence outreach activities, where researchers try to disseminate their findings, are useful not only for the audience, who enjoy something unusual and (hopefully) interesting, but also for the researcher him/herself!
Here I will try to talk about myself and the project I will try to develop during the next months at the ICIQ in Tarragona!
The idea at the basis of SOCUPOLs came into my mind last during the summer of 2014, when I was working as a post doc at the Universitá Ca' Foscari in Venezia, Italy.
During my previous studies it has been observed that some compounds we synthesised were able to promote some particular chemical transformations.
When a compound (whatever its nature is) can facilitate a chemical reaction, or make it possible, this compound is called a catalyst (see "What is a catalyst section").
Many different types of catalysts exists (liquid, solid, cheap, expensive, etc.). This project focus on the preparation of Organocatalysts, in other words, catalysts that do not contain metals.
This approach leads to a series of advantages, the most important are:
1) no need for expensive and rare metals (cheap and environmentally friendly);
2) stability of the catalyst (often metal based catalyst are air and water sensitive), which reflects in ease handling of these materials.
Not all the organo-catalysts are cheap, easy to handle, safe and environmentally compatible. However most of them are so!
Why did I move to Tarragona to do this? The reason is simple!
Here in Tarragona I joined the group of prof. Pericas, one of the most influencial experts in supported organo-catalysts! Sounds exciting, isn't it?
Yeah! But what is exactly a supported organo-catalyst?
I hope the concept of organocatalyst was made clear, a supported catalyst is nothing more than what the term tells us. It is in fact supported on a matrix. The latter usually is a solid material, so, when the reaction is finished, it is very ease to recover the catalyst and the product. In fact I did not mention this before, but usually the recovery of the catalyst is very difficult if not impossible.
Imagine you have prepared your pasta and then you need to recover the salt because you want to use it again.
Well, it is viable. Water can be distilled off but the obtained salt will be contaminated with starch. Methods for the separation of these two materials is possible, but everyone of us just throw away water, salt and starch, it makes more sense economically.
The isolation of the products and the recovery of the catalyst can be a very energy and material demanding process!
If instead the catalyst is "attached on something" that can be easily recovered when it has finished its job, then a simple filtration, decantation or other straightforward protocol can be used to achieve product/catalyst separation.
Great! But this is just the beginning!
Once recovered the catalyst can be used again and again! It is just like you can recover over and over the detergent of your washing machine! (In this case it is impossible. I am sorry but you will have to buy it again!)
From the pot to the tube!
Ususally carrying out a chemical transformation is like preparing pasta, a "pot" is used. Starting materials, solvents and catalysts are added, the mixture maintained at certain temperature for a required time, then a procedure to isolate the products is performed.
What if we put the supported catalyst inside a tube and we make substances we want to transform to flow through it?
Excellent idea! If the catalyst is stable over time, with a small amount of it, it would be possible to transform a huge amount of starting materials.
This approach is called "flow chemistry" (what an unexpected term!).
It is not trivial moving from the pot to the "tube". Try to imagine a system to prepare spaghetti in a tube continuously!
It appears clear now why the preparation of supported organo-catalyst is interesting and possibly very useful for processing materials.
Since they are "supported" they are not dissolved in the mixture, but remain attached to a solid matrix which can constitute what chemical engineers call a fixed bed.
Ok... Let's say I will be able to prepare a catalyst, what do I want to use it for?
I already explain what S, O and C of SOCUPOLs means, now it's time for the remaining letters!
Everbody of us have heard something about the use of renewable resources and how this approach is important to switch from a fossil fuel based economy to a renewable feedstocks based economy.
Bioderived materials like vegetable oils can be used as starting material to obtain fuels like biodiesel, while processing of agricultural and other waste can yield biocrude.
Last year I had the opportunity to work with a leading expert in the field, prof. Thomas Maschmeyer.
However not only fuels are obtained from oil!
In fact the large majority of the substances used in the chemical industry are derived from oil. If we want to move away from the use of fossil fuel to achieve a carbon-neutral society we have to consider also the production of chemicals.
In this field something have been done already. Polymers obtained from renewable feedstock are already available on large scale.
Fermentation processes and other simple transformation can degrade sugars into simpler molecules, such as polyols.
What is a polyol? I will explain it soon!
When a catalyst is being developed, it is already known what it can serve for. Its structure and properties is tuned in function of the process it is created for.
However sometimes a catalyst developed for a particular transformation can reveal useful in a completely different application.
That's the most exciting part of research in my opinion, when an unexpected result leads to something useful!
Considered that I am preparing new materials and studying their applications following two lines:
1) Preparation of catalysts that are already know to be able to promote the transformation of polyols and
2) Preparation of new structures tht possess some interesting features and test them in a curiosity driven approach.
Obviously catalysts prepared following line 1) can also be used in line 2) trying to find some pleasant surprise!
SOCUPOLs stands for "Supported Organo-Catalysts for the Upgrade of bioderived Polyols"
All the people I talk with ask me: "What are you doing? Please make it understandable"
That's the hard part!
After many years working on a subject is difficult to find the right words to explain what you are doing to people that works on completely different fields. However it is important to undeline that look at your research "from the outside" helps a lot! Hence outreach activities, where researchers try to disseminate their findings, are useful not only for the audience, who enjoy something unusual and (hopefully) interesting, but also for the researcher him/herself!
Here I will try to talk about myself and the project I will try to develop during the next months at the ICIQ in Tarragona!
The idea at the basis of SOCUPOLs came into my mind last during the summer of 2014, when I was working as a post doc at the Universitá Ca' Foscari in Venezia, Italy.
During my previous studies it has been observed that some compounds we synthesised were able to promote some particular chemical transformations.
When a compound (whatever its nature is) can facilitate a chemical reaction, or make it possible, this compound is called a catalyst (see "What is a catalyst section").
Many different types of catalysts exists (liquid, solid, cheap, expensive, etc.). This project focus on the preparation of Organocatalysts, in other words, catalysts that do not contain metals.
This approach leads to a series of advantages, the most important are:
1) no need for expensive and rare metals (cheap and environmentally friendly);
2) stability of the catalyst (often metal based catalyst are air and water sensitive), which reflects in ease handling of these materials.
Not all the organo-catalysts are cheap, easy to handle, safe and environmentally compatible. However most of them are so!
Why did I move to Tarragona to do this? The reason is simple!
Here in Tarragona I joined the group of prof. Pericas, one of the most influencial experts in supported organo-catalysts! Sounds exciting, isn't it?
Yeah! But what is exactly a supported organo-catalyst?
I hope the concept of organocatalyst was made clear, a supported catalyst is nothing more than what the term tells us. It is in fact supported on a matrix. The latter usually is a solid material, so, when the reaction is finished, it is very ease to recover the catalyst and the product. In fact I did not mention this before, but usually the recovery of the catalyst is very difficult if not impossible.
Imagine you have prepared your pasta and then you need to recover the salt because you want to use it again.
Well, it is viable. Water can be distilled off but the obtained salt will be contaminated with starch. Methods for the separation of these two materials is possible, but everyone of us just throw away water, salt and starch, it makes more sense economically.
The isolation of the products and the recovery of the catalyst can be a very energy and material demanding process!
If instead the catalyst is "attached on something" that can be easily recovered when it has finished its job, then a simple filtration, decantation or other straightforward protocol can be used to achieve product/catalyst separation.
Great! But this is just the beginning!
Once recovered the catalyst can be used again and again! It is just like you can recover over and over the detergent of your washing machine! (In this case it is impossible. I am sorry but you will have to buy it again!)
From the pot to the tube!
Ususally carrying out a chemical transformation is like preparing pasta, a "pot" is used. Starting materials, solvents and catalysts are added, the mixture maintained at certain temperature for a required time, then a procedure to isolate the products is performed.
What if we put the supported catalyst inside a tube and we make substances we want to transform to flow through it?
Excellent idea! If the catalyst is stable over time, with a small amount of it, it would be possible to transform a huge amount of starting materials.
This approach is called "flow chemistry" (what an unexpected term!).
It is not trivial moving from the pot to the "tube". Try to imagine a system to prepare spaghetti in a tube continuously!
It appears clear now why the preparation of supported organo-catalyst is interesting and possibly very useful for processing materials.
Since they are "supported" they are not dissolved in the mixture, but remain attached to a solid matrix which can constitute what chemical engineers call a fixed bed.
Ok... Let's say I will be able to prepare a catalyst, what do I want to use it for?
I already explain what S, O and C of SOCUPOLs means, now it's time for the remaining letters!
Everbody of us have heard something about the use of renewable resources and how this approach is important to switch from a fossil fuel based economy to a renewable feedstocks based economy.
Bioderived materials like vegetable oils can be used as starting material to obtain fuels like biodiesel, while processing of agricultural and other waste can yield biocrude.
Last year I had the opportunity to work with a leading expert in the field, prof. Thomas Maschmeyer.
However not only fuels are obtained from oil!
In fact the large majority of the substances used in the chemical industry are derived from oil. If we want to move away from the use of fossil fuel to achieve a carbon-neutral society we have to consider also the production of chemicals.
In this field something have been done already. Polymers obtained from renewable feedstock are already available on large scale.
Fermentation processes and other simple transformation can degrade sugars into simpler molecules, such as polyols.
What is a polyol? I will explain it soon!
When a catalyst is being developed, it is already known what it can serve for. Its structure and properties is tuned in function of the process it is created for.
However sometimes a catalyst developed for a particular transformation can reveal useful in a completely different application.
That's the most exciting part of research in my opinion, when an unexpected result leads to something useful!
Considered that I am preparing new materials and studying their applications following two lines:
1) Preparation of catalysts that are already know to be able to promote the transformation of polyols and
2) Preparation of new structures tht possess some interesting features and test them in a curiosity driven approach.
Obviously catalysts prepared following line 1) can also be used in line 2) trying to find some pleasant surprise!