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Seminar: Catalytic Upcycling Technologies for Sustainability and Circular Economy

Speaker: Dionisios Vlachos, Unidel Dan Rich Energy Chaired Professor of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering, University of Delaware

Host: Will Medlin

Tuesday, April 12, 2022 - 2:45 p.m
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Seminar Abstract

Climate change demands a paradigm change in the chemical industry and waste stream valorization. Biomass provides a means to renewable products with potentially enhanced performance over current products. We report the production of bio lubricant base oils from lignocellulosic biomass. Next, we discuss plastics upcycling. Single-use plastics impose an enormous environmental threat, but recycling, especially of polyolefins, has proven challenging. We report a direct method to selectively convert various polyolefins, including virgin materials, layered materials, and everyday plastics, to branched, liquid fuels including diesel, jet, and gasoline-range hydrocarbons, with high yields and at low temperatures in the melt. We discuss new mechanisms by which polyolefins depolymerize.

Biosketch

Dionisios (Dion) G. Vlachos is the Unidel Dan Rich Energy Chaired Professor of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering, a Professor of Physics at the University of Delaware, and the Director of the University of Delaware Energy Institute (DEI) and of the Catalysis Center for Energy Innovation (CCEI), an Energy Frontier Research Center (EFRC). He is also a lead in the Process Intensification Fundamentals of the RAPID Manufacturing Institute. Professor Vlachos is the recipient of the R. H. Wilhelm Award in Chemical Reaction Engineering from AIChE, the Philadelphia Catalysis Club Award, the Irving Wender Award for Excellence in Catalysis from the Pittsburgh-Cleveland Catalysis Society, Exceptional Achievements in Catalysis Award of the Catalysis Science & Technology Division (CATL) of the ACS, and is an ExxonMobil Visiting Chair Professorship at the National University of Singapore and an AAAS Fellow. He also received an NSF Career Award and an Office of Naval Research Young Investigator Award. His current research interests include catalysis and reaction engineering for a circular economy, renewable fuels and chemicals, plastics recycling, modular and distributed manufacturing, process intensification and electrification, multiscale modeling, data science, uncertainty quantification, and in silico prediction of catalysts.