Valorising Agricultural Waste using Green Chemistry & Engineering for Sustainable Chemical Production

Nottingham Trent University, United Kingdom

Updated: 2 months ago
Location: Nottingham, ENGLAND

Overview

Project ID: SS_13
Theme: Safety and Sustainability


The agricultural industry represents an excellent opportunity for circular approaches to chemical production; the industry is well established globally, operates at the million-tonne level and around 50% of many crops (e.g. potatoes) are never consumed.  Significant levels of non-food biomass are typically viewed as waste (stalks, leaves, roots etc) and are often used for low value activities such as energy production in anaerobic digestors, or as stock feed, with still more simply ploughed back into the ground to retain the nutrients. There is significant potential to valorise the waste by circular approaches, but a key challenge is in doing this whilst maintaining economic feasibility.


Chemicals are found in everything from food to paints, pharmaceuticals and cosmetics, but most chemicals are manufactured from finite feedstocks, such as crude oil. The biorefinery is a concept that uses renewable feedstocks and utilises both the low value, high volume fractions and high value, low volume fractions (similar to a crude oil refinery).


This project presents an exciting opportunity to work at the interface of chemistry, agriculture and business. And involves an inter-disciplinary approach that combines the biorefinery concept with green chemistry, engineering and techno-economic assessments to develop more efficient and scalable processes that can be deployed on a variety of agricultural waste streams. The project will be based primarily in chemistry, but will involve regular meetings with the project supervisory team and occasional visits to industrial stakeholders.


If you have a scientific background with a passion for sustainability and business and are keen to make real world impact, then we want to hear from you!


Supervisory Team

Darren Lee

Andy Gill

Xiao Ma



Entry qualifications
Please see our applications page for guidance and eligibility criteria.

Fees and funding

This is a fully funded PhD studentship opportunity, open for UK and international applicants.


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