MPI Colloquia Series: Prof. Dr.-Ing. Matthias Wessling, Aachener Verfahrenstechnik: “Beyond fossils” - a biohybrid approach to new chemical value chains

The Max Planck Institute Magdeburg invites you to its series of colloquia.
Top-class scientists, from notable German and worldwide research institutions, give a survey of their research work. Everybody who is interested, is invited to attend.

The colloquium will be held online via Zoom:

Meeting ID: 980 9148 1626
Passcode: 877435

Abstract:

“Beyond fossils” - a biohybrid approach to new chemical value chains

With the ambition to mitigate CO₂ emissions and even become a CO₂ negative economy in the long run, new paradigms of chemical engineering and chemical value chains need to be developed. Realizing such scenarios will be a herculian task for todays and next generations chemical engineers. One possible scenario is the integration of renewable carbon sources such as biomass, carbon dioxide, water and renewable electrical energy into new chemical value chains. Such visionary if not utopical moon shot endeavors require high risk research in unknown scientific territory.

The lecture will (a) describe the RWTH Aachen research environment contributing to above ambitions and (b) give some examples of own research on this matter. Examples will spotlight three topics:

• the design and manufacturing of novel electrochemical reactor geometries utilizing additive manufacturing and tubular electrodes
• the process of fermentative glucose conversion to acetoin and its subsequent electrochemical conversion to 2-butanone
• the conversion of fructose to hydroxymethylfurfural HMF und the subsequent use of an L/L dispersion to electrochemically oxidize HMF to furan dicarbonic acid FDCA