Title: Sustainable Catalytic Biorefining: Challenges and Opportunities for Catalyst Design
Time: 13:30 to 15:30, Tuesday, April.23, 2024
Place: F207, School of Mechanical Engineering
Host: JIANG Zhi, Assoc. Professor (Institute of Advanced Energy and Powertrain Technology)

Biography
Karen is Professor of Catalysis and Director of the Centre for Catalysis and Clean Energy at Griffith University, and previously held professorial positions at RMIT University (2018-23) and Aston University (2013-17). At Aston she was also Research Director of the European Bioenergy Research Institute and held a prestigious Royal Society Industry Fellowship in collaboration with Johnson Matthey. Karen holds a BA and PhD from the University of Cambridge, and MSc in heterogeneous catalysis from the University of Liverpool, and has also held academic positions at the University of York and Cardiff University. She has published >300 peer-reviewed articles (h-index 79, >23.650 citations Google Scholar). Karen’s research interests lie in the design the design of tuneable porous materials for sustainable biofuels and chemicals production from renewable resources. Recent projects have spanned the conversion of biomass from municipal, agricultural or forestry waste to fuels and chemicals, and the transformation of bakery waste to additives for application in coatings and polymers. She has also worked on depollution technologies to remove organic contaminants from waste-water in the seafood industry and palm and olive oil plantations in South East Asia. Karen is Associate Editor of Sustainable Energy & Fuels (Royal Society of Chemistry), and Energy & Environmental Materials (Wiley) and Editorial Board member for Energy & Environmental Science (Royal Society of Chemistry). She is also a co-investigator and theme leader on the recently funded Australian Research Council Centre of Excellence, ‘Green Electrochemical Transformation of Carbon Dioxide’ - GetCO2.

Abstract
Concerns over dwindling oil reserves, CO2 emissions from fossil fuel sources and associated climate change is driving the need for renewable energy. In contrast to fossil derived hydrocarbons, that generally require selective oxidation for chemical production, highly functional bio-derived molecules will require selective deoxygenation to their target products. Such transformations may involve cascade reactions, where multicomponent catalysts containing tunable acid or base sites may act in concert with metallic sites or cooperatively to promote sequential dehydration or condensation steps and metal catalyzed hydrogenation or oxidation steps. This presentation will discuss innovations in catalyst/process design required to overcome the scientific and engineering barriers to the economic production of low carbon fuels and chemicals from sustainable feedstocks. Case studies will explore nanoengineering of bifunctional catalysts for upgrading of bio-oils and alcohols to fuels, the production of platform chemicals and fuel precursors from waste derived sugars, and tuning of pore architectures to enable substrate channeling in cascade reactions.