Fracking is a controversial technique that involves injecting water, sand and chemicals into shale rock to extract natural gas. One of the main challenges of fracking is how to treat the wastewater that is generated, which contains high concentrations of salt and organic pollutants. A new study conducted by the…
Two discoveries made in the last five years lead to a brand new way to study and exploit enzyme catalysis. The first of these is the rapid, reversible and stable electrochemical interconversion of NAD(P)+ and NADP(H) by a small photosynthetic electron-transfer enzyme (‘FNR’) located in a nanoporous metal oxide electrode. The second development…
Ethene belongs to the fastest growing chemicals worldwide mainly driven by polyethylene production. Currently, ethene is manufactured in large-scale, natural gas crackers by dehydrogenation in a rather energy demanding high-temperature process. The oxidative dehydrogenation is a commercially very interesting alternative and is being investigated since the pioneering works by Thorsteinson…
PETase and related enzymes have created much interest due to their potential use in the commercial recycling of plastic waste. The work presented here will demonstrate that molecular modelling has a key role to play in understanding how these enzymes work and also how they can be optimised for maximum…
Combined/simultaneous measurements of a range Synchrotron radiation (SR) based techniques with either another SR or optical spectroscopy-based methods has been a valuable addition to a suite of structural methods available in a synchrotron radiation source, in the determination of structures in a variety of solids. Furthermore, addition of operando methods,…
Electrolysis of water provides a sustainable pathway toward storing electrical energy from renewable sources in the form of chemical bonds. Among the two half-cell reactions involved in water splitting, the anodic oxygen evolution reaction (OER) requires electric potentials significantly higher than the thermodynamic limit to achieve desirable electrochemical rates, making…
Electron microscopy is one of the most important methods for studying the micro- and nano-scale morphology of catalysts, materials, and biological objects. However, any applications of the method require collecting large amounts of statistically-significant data, significantly complicating its acquisition and analysis. In the talk, solutions to these problems will be…
Flow chemistry and automation is the future of pharmaceuticals, fine chemical, photochemical, drug discovery and material-based industries. Reactions under flow conditions have been used for hundreds of years in the petrochemical industries, whereas its importance and application has been explored in chemistry in last two decades. Flow chemistry can offer faster,…
I will discuss how biomass and bioinspiration can be utilised to design powerful electrocatalysts for Oxygen and CO2 Reduction. Biography Magda Titirici has a PHD from University of Dortmund and Habitation from Max Planck Institute of Colloids and Interfaces. She moved in the UK in 2013 first as a Reader,…
Alkene metathesis and transfer hydrogenation are archetypal reversible catalytic reactions that are used throughout the chemical sciences. However, given their utility, there are surprisingly few analogous processes applicable to other functional groups. Thus, we have endeavoured to expand the repertoire of reversible catalytic reactions and explore their value as synthetic…
