Chemical industry has eye on sustainable future

29 January 2008 15:31  [Source: ICIS news]

BERLIN (ICIS news)--New developments in the chemicals industry will provide answers for a sustainable future, a university professor said on Tuesday.

 

“I will not claim it [science] as a solution but it can show solutions are available,” said Markus Antonietti, director of Germany’s Planck Institute of Colloids and Interfaces, here at the SusChem conference entitled the European Technology Platform for Sustainable Chemistry.

  

Antonietti presented several chemical products that he said could be used to solve global sustainability issues.

 

Carbon monoliths could be used in batteries, for instance, he said, which meant they could be charged faster and have a bigger capacity.

 

“It will make a big difference for a car,” he said, adding this would mean an electric car could go 200km rather than 40km and be charged quickly.

 

It was possible to create energy materials in a sustainable way as they could be created from sugars and polysaccharides, Antonietti said.

 

Friedrich Bergius described the process in 1913 but because of the low price of oil it had never been acted on, he added.

 

Polymers could be made from soft waste biomass, which included things normally thrown away such as sugar beads, rapeseed straw, waste water sludge and orange peel, he said. “It’s a big vision to use these materials. Don’t talk, do.”  

 

SusChem brings together a wide spectrum of organisations and individuals looking to boost sustainable chemistry, industrial biotechnology and chemical engineering research, development and innovation in Europe. The conference ends on Wednesday.

Bookmark Simon Robinson’s Big Biofuels Blog for some independent thinking on biofuels

 

ICIS Copyright © Reed Business Information 2009

Author: Lucy Craymer
+44 20 8652 3214

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