Events

Maria-Magdalena Titirici 'Hydrothermal carbonisation of biomass: a route to meaningful nanostructured carbonaceous materials'

Date: Tuesday 21 February 2012 11:00 - 12:00

Location: SEMS Seminar Room

Maria-Magdalena Titirici Max-Planck Institute of Colloids and Interfaces, Potsdam, Germany

Hydrothermal carbonisation of biomass: a route to meaningful nanostructured carbonaceous materials

The search for meaningful ways to transfer biomass into useful materials, more efficient energy carriers, and/or carbon storage deposits is a key question of our days. Transfer of biomass toward carbon-rich materials with potential large scale application is an option to sequester carbon from plant material, taking it out of the short-term carbon cycle and therefore binding CO2 efficiently and in a useful way.
Since nature produces the vast amount of 170 billion tons of biomass per year by photosynthesis, 75% of which can be assigned to the class of carbohydrates, this can be easily converted into carbonaceous materials using hydrothermal carbonisation. [1] [2] This process is therefore an alternative and simple option to use wet, low-value biomass, leading to carbonaceous products and composites, with the majority of original carbon being sequestered in the solid.
A key feature is not only the occurrence of carbonisation in itself but also the appearance as useful nanostructures with an appropriate surface chemistry and very important applications in numerous fields such as catalysis [3] energy storage [4] [5], adsorption [6] or CO2 sequestration [7].

References:

[1] M. M. Titirici, M. Antonietti, Chem. Soc. Rev. 2010, 39, 103-116.
[2] B. Hu, K. Wang, L. Wu, S.-H. Yu, M. Antonietti, M. M. Titirici, Adv.
Mater. 2010, 22, 813-828.
[3] P. Makowski, R. D. Cakan, M. Antonietti, F. Goettmann, M.-M.
Titirici, Chem. Comm. 2008, 999-1001.
[4] Y.-S. Hu, R. Demir-Cakan, M .M. Titirici, J. O. Muller, R. Schlogl,
M. Antonietti, J. Maier, Angew. Chem.-Int. Edit. 2008, 47, 1645-1649.
[5] K. Tang, R. J. White, M. M. Titirici, J. Maier, Chem.Sus.Chem 2011,
ASAP.
[6] R. Demir-Cakan, N. Baccile, M. Antonietti, M.-M. Titirici, Chem.
Mat. 2009, 21, 484-490.
[7] L. Zhao, Z. Bacsik, N. Hedin, W. Wei, Y. Sun, M. Antonietti, M.-M.
Titirici, Chemsuschem 2010, 3, 840-845.