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Green chemistry applied to the upgrading of bio-based chemicals: towards sustainable chemical production.
Alvise Perosa
Università Ca’ Foscari Venezia, Italy
Abstract
The efficient production of biobased chemicals is an indispensable component for the growth of the
biorefining industry. However, the development of conversion technologies to synthesise products derived
from renewable substrates is still one of the bottlenecks towards a fully integrated biorefining industry. The
development of these technologies must include a green chemistry approach in order to be truly
sustainable, and must – in our opinion – be sufficiently broad in order to produce multiple outputs and
avoid the target-based approach aimed at replacing single chemicals currently produced from fossil
feedstocks.
This talk will illustrate examples of green chemical conversions for the upgrading of renewable platform
chemicals derived from the carbohydrate and lignin fraction of biomass such as levulinic acid, butyro- and
valerolactone, glycerol, p-coumaryl alcohol, by using greener reagents and greener reaction systems.
Biography
Alvise Perosa teaches organic and green chemistry at the Università Ca’ Foscari Venezia. He obtained his
PhD in Chemistry from Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland in 1996 as a Fulbright Fellow, and was
an Endeavour Visiting Research Fellow at the University of Sydney on 2007. Alvise coordinated and
organized the European Summer School on Green Chemistry from 1998 to 2005.
His research interests are in the development of new greener synthetic processes by using alternative safer
reagents, solvents, catalysts, and novel more efficient reaction conditions. His focus has been on the use of
ionic liquid solvents and catalysts, on continuous flow processes using supercritical carbon dioxide as
solvent/carrier, on the use of dialkyl carbonates as green reagents and solvents, and on the development of
new multiphase systems. In view of conjugating “green” with “sustainable” he applies green methodologies
to upgrade bio-based substrates obtainable from biomass.
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