Ionic Liquid Biorefining of Lignocellulose to Sustainable Polymers

We currently make more than just fuel from petroleum refining. Many of the plastics, solvents and other products that are used in everyday life are derived from these non-renewable resources. Our research programme aims to replace many of the common materials used as plastics with alternatives created from plants. This will enable us to tie together the UK's desire to move to non-petroleum fuel sources (e.g. biofuels) with our ability to produce renewable polymers and related products.

Plant cell walls are made up of two main components: carbohydrate polymers (long chains of sugars) and lignin, which is the glue holding plants together. We will first develop methods of separating these two components using sustainable solvents called ionic liquids. Ionic liquids are salts which are liquids at room temperature, enabling a variety of chemical transformations to be carried out under consitions not normally available to traditional organic solvents. These ionic liquids also reduce pollution as they have no vapours and can be made from non-toxic, non-petroleum based resources.

We will take the isolated carbohydrate polymers and break them down into simple sugars using enzymes and then further convert those sugars into building blocks for plastics using a variety of novel catalytic materials specifically designed for this process. The lignin stream will also be broken down and rebuilt into new plastics that can replace common materials. All of these renewable polymers will be used in a wide range of consumer products, including packaging materials, plastic containers and construction materials. The chemical feedstocks that we are creating will be flexible (used for chemical, material and fuel synthesis), safe (these feedstocks are predominantly non-toxic) and sustainable (most of the developed products are biodegradable). This will help reduce the overall environmental impact of the material economy in the UK.

The chemistry that we will use focusses on creating highly energy efficient and low-cost ways of making these materials without producing large amounts of waste. We are committed to only developing future manufacturing routes that are benign to the environment in which we all live. In addition, natural material sources often have properties that are superior to those created using artificial means. We plan to exploit these advantages of natural resources in order to produce both replacements for current products and new products with improved performance. This will make our synthetic routes both environmentally responsible and economically advantageous. The UK has an opportunity to take an international lead in this area due to the accumulation of expertise within this country.

The overall goal of this project is to develop sustainable manufacturing routes that will stimulate new UK businesses and environmentally responsible means of making common, high value materials. We will bring together scientific experts in designing processes, manufacturing plastics, growing raw biomass resources and developing new chemistries. The flexibility of resources is vital to the success of this endeavour, as no single plant biomass can be used for manufacturing on a year-round basis. Together with experienced leaders of responsible manufacturing industries, we will develop new ways of making everyday materials in a sustainable and economically beneficial way.

The result of this research will be a fundamental philosophical shift to our material, chemical, and energy economy. The technologies proposed in this work will help break our dependence on rapidly depleting fossil resources and enable us to become both sustainable and self-sufficient. This will result in greater security, less pollution, and a much more reliable and responsible UK economy.

We anticipate our work will benefit a wide range of stakeholders including: biomass growers and processors, chemical and energy companies, polymer manufacturers and compositors and the broader chemical industries, as well as consumers interested in new products developed through the exploitation of sustainable feedstocks. Our proposed project will demonstrate to this broad base of stakeholders the opportunities and benefits of novel fractionation and conversion processes, and compute performance benchmarks by which novel processes can be compared against existing process chains.

In order to ensure this impact, we have already involved several industrial (Shell, BASF, Plaxica, Biocatalysts, Johnson Matthey), institutional (IBERS, JBEI, FuBio) and policy (Climate-KIC, Grantham Institute) stakeholders in our research programme. Representatives from each of these groups will be closely involved in our research efforts, advising us on pathways to commercialisation and ensuring we maximise the impact of our research efforts.

We shall work with our stakeholders to determine the economic, institutional and technical obstacles that currently prevent a shift to renewable resource based manufacturing. This will help us overcome these obstacles and ensure smooth implementation and exploitation of the fundamental principles developed and discovered during the course of this research programme.

Public engagement on such a major social issue is crucial. In order to ensure engagement with the general public, we will use the outreach providers at our home universities and also the professional public institutes with which we are associated. These include the Porter Alliance (biorenewable resource development), Energy Futures Laboratory (bioenergy), Grantham Institute for Climate Change, Manufacturing Futures Lab (sustainable manufacturing practices) and the BSBEC Outreach Group (bioenergy crop and land-use policy). We will also engage directly with the public by building a project website containing information on renewable manufacturing and by taking advantage of Imperial College's proximity to the National Science and Natural History museums, which provide a unique opportunity to show-case research on biorefining.

As this research is primarily aimed at developing sustainable manufacturing, we anticipate a substantial impact on the future landscape of the UK manufacturing sector. The material routes and practices developed in this type of research represent potential economic impact by developing secure routes of material and chemical manufacturing within the UK. Breaking our dependence on fossil reserves will necessarily create new manufacturing industries and also reduce our dependence on imported goods.

A shift from fossil resources to renewable ones will have a positive impact on the environment, improving quality of life for everyone in the UK. This objective is concurrent with the positive economic impact; the linking of these goals is vital to the realization of either.

There is great training potential within this project. As we will be employing nine full-time researchers in the programme, we will be furthering the dissemination of sustainable manufacturing principles into the employment sector. This will influence future manufacturing directions as the propagation of these future research and development leaders into the chemical industry is inevitable.

The extensive timeline of this programme (five years) will enable us to have a sustained impact on manufacturing practices and policies, as we will be able to extend our vision into industry (through our project partners) and public policy (through our advisory institutes). Thes value of these goals cannot be overstated - the impact of academic research can only be realized if the support of government agencies and the UK public is evident. This requires long-term committments to the research principles we have outlined within this programme.