Associate Prof. Joseph S. M. Samec (Stockholm University, Sweden) will give a lecture entitled: "Green chemistry through C-O bond activation"
Abstract: The last century, chemists have developed a plethora of methodologies to convert olefins and their derivatives. The olefins origin from cracking of crude oil distillates in refineries. According to BP:s 2019 report, crude oil will only last another 50 years. Thus, we need to find another source of carbon for our demand of chemicals for materials, medicines, transportations etc. The last decades, it has also become evident that our usage of fossil sources has caused climate changes that are out of our control. Taking this into account, we need to find a carbon source that is renewable and biomass is such a source. The developed methodologies that chemists use for olefins cannot be translated to biomass where alcohols and ethers are the most prominent functional group. Instead, chemists will need to develop a completely new tool box of tools to convert alcohols and ethers to compounds for all our demands. In this talk, examples to convert biomass to bulk chemicals and further transformation of alcohols to valorized compounds will be disclosed. Also, fundamental understanding on how to activate the C-O bond to enable substitution reactions in mainly alcohols has been studied and will be discussed during the lecture.
