The team is building new polymer materials to turn waste plant matter—stems, husks, leaves—into industrial chemicals and cleaning agents, bypassing food crops like corn or palm oil entirely. This matters because current bio-based chemicals often rely on starch or vegetable oils, which compete with food production. Large-scale use of those feedstocks could drive up food prices and threaten global food security. The researchers aim to replace them with non-edible agricultural waste, using high-throughput methods to rapidly test and optimise new materials that can break down and convert this waste in a single process. If successful, the project could make renewable chemicals economically viable without competing for farmland. Manufacturers would gain sustainable routes to platform chemicals and bio-surfactants—ingredients in everything from plastics to detergents—reducing dependence on fossil feedstocks. The work integrates supercritical CO₂ extraction and microwave reactors up to 100 litres, bridging lab discovery with industrial scale. It is applied, not fundamental: the goal is a practical, industry-backed route to greener manufacturing.
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There has been a global shift towards the use of biomass as a source of fuels and chemicals necessitated by decreasing fossil reserves, increasing oil prices, security of supply and environmental issues. It has also become clear that the manufacturing industry is embracing this change and has clearly stated its aims to develop sustainable and efficient routes to manufacturing products and hence reducing their dependence on fossil feedstocks and environmental impact. To academics, this represents a huge opportunity to generate new scientific advances in the knowledge that their application will have strong industrial support. In addition to be motivated by scientific curiosity, we scientists need to acknowledge our social responsibility to partner with the manufacturing industry to contribute to a better society and more sustainable future. Advances in the development of routes to renewable chemicals have been observed in recent years, however there are still major issues remaining regarding the efficiency and viability of these routes to deliver renewable chemicals economically. Very importantly, many recent advances in biorefinary technologies have been based on feedstocks that compete with food or feed such as starch or vegetable oils. Large-scale implementation of these technologies can have disastrous consequences for food security worldwide. Therefore, it is paramount that new biorefinary technologies are based upon sources of biomass that do not compete with food production. The overarching aim of this proposal is to develop the next generation of structured polymeric materials that will enable to efficiently produce platform chemicals and bio-surfactants from waste biomass, integrating state of the art technologies for biomass activation and separation in one-pot processes. This project is built upon the expertise in green chemistry, biomass activation, catalysis and materials science from the partners in York and Liverpool and their strong engagement with industry. State of the art facilities in high-throughput materials discovery and characterisation will be utilized, and advanced techniques in biomass activation, such as supercritical CO2 (scCO2) extraction, and microwave pyrolysis and hydrolysis reactors up to scales of 100L will be used.
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