3MT_Pitch_Trash or cash? The perks of a catalytic upgrade of biomass as a sustainable alternative to fossil resources
(2025) IMCN 3MT competition — Location: Louvain-la-Neuve (15.May.2025)
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- (en) INTRODUCTION: There’s a treasure hidden in everyone’s stinky compost bag: plenty of different shades of plant-based waste ready to become an abundant and sustainable alternative to fossil resources. SITUATION: How is this possible (you may wonder)? Well, imagine biomass as your favorite Lego set, a wonderful and complex construction that can be taken apart back to its very starting pieces. The building blocks obtained, called platform molecules, will then be further used to assemble bio-derived goods such as plastics, medicines and fuels. PROBLEM: Unfortunately, biomass as a resource is still lacking the popularity it deserves. Because of its diverse nature, multiple steps and harsh conditions are required to achieve its full degradation, and the process is often time and energy consuming, limiting the perspectives for an upscale. SOLUTION: With my PhD project then, we are looking into possible ways to overcome these difficulties. The idea is to develop special solid materials, called catalysts, that can help recover the desired building blocks without making too much of an effort by reducing the number of steps and reactants required. The secret lies in their properties: features like shape, composition, and size, can be adjusted to facilitate the upgrade of the starting biomass. Within my project, we decided to focus on 5-HMF as a valuable platform molecule to be recovered starting from cellobiose, a simplified model of real cellulose. My work then consisted of putting together all the necessary ingredients in the correct amounts to produce a good catalyst for the system under study, and finally to test it. After multiple optimizations, with our first catalyst, we managed to achieve a complete transformation of cellobiose into almost 40% of our desired Lego block upon 24h. But most importantly, with our material we have been able to cover three steps in one go while working in mild conditions, meaning low temperature, low pressure and using environmental-friendly solvents. CONCLUSION: A promising start, isn’t it? Of course, there’s still a lot to research and improve, but considering the current scenario dominated by climate changes and the diminishing of fossil resources, we proved it is possible to change perspective towards a greener future. Thank you!
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Tonelli, A. (2025). 3MT_Pitch_Trash or cash? The perks of a catalytic upgrade of biomass as a sustainable alternative to fossil resources. IMCN 3MT competition, Louvain-la-Neuve. https://hdl.handle.net/2078.5/243910