Catalysts can change the world
THOMAS MASCHMEYER’S catalysis inventions and MITRA SAFAVI-NAEINI ’s revolutionary cancer treatments. NEXT BEST THINGS
There are now more cars in Sydney’s CBD than there were in the 1970s, yet our air quality is radically better. Why? Because today we have catalytic converters installed in our vehicles to reduce emissions. In fact, about 90% of the world’s fuels, chemicals and organic materials are touched by catalysts during their production.
Catalysts can change the world. They already have. But there are big challenges ahead. Early on in my career, I became fascinated by the process of designing catalytic sites to influence the progress of chemical reactions. To be able to draw up a concept for a catalyst and then physically make it, to see it in action, to generate new molecules – this was just so exciting for me.
I also realised that if I wanted to help make our world more sustainable, I had to turn my attention to improving our chemical processes. Catalysis and catalysts are the obvious tools to do it.
For a start, I want to help create a future characterised by dramatic changes to the way we generate, distribute and use power. It’s generally agreed that our energy sources must be fully renewable. Less well understood is how this transition to renewable energy has the potential to power what we call the “circular economy”, where clever re-purposing, re-using and recycling dramatically extends the lifetime of the raw materials we use.
Many years ago I started to develop some of the views that are now commonly referred to as the “12 Principles of Green Chemistry” – for example, how we should think about processing using non-toxic materials, low energy inputs, low waste/no waste, high atom efficiency and so on. These ideas join beautifully with our need to preserve the materials that we are using – plastics, for example. The idea of a circular economy is simply a rational response to the fact that we are currently using just under two planets’ worth of resources to maintain the lifestyle of the one planet’s people. (If everybody lived the kind of lifestyle we enjoy in Australia, we actually would need around five planets!) We only have one – so we need to use what we have over and over and over again.
But the circular economy needs to be powered. And this power has to come from renewable energy. Such energy, like wind and solar, is often intermittent. Therefore it needs buffers to interact with grid systems that have not been designed for this intermittent input.
Everyone agrees that batteries are the buffers that will be the backbone of our future energy grid. What used to be supplied securely by carbon-intensive fossil fuels will now be supplied with the aid of energy storage
systems to ensure high-quality, reliable power 24 hours a day. This revolution will give rise to largely untapped opportunities for wealth and job creation in the non-polluting power industry of the future.
Especially interesting is zinc bromide chemistry, as it has many advantages over other approaches: it can operate at up to 55°C without the need for cooling, and the components act as a flame retardant, making it very safe. In my laboratory we invented a self-supporting gel that is being commercialised by my spin-out Gelion Technologies. We have demonstrated various batteries with near 90% round-trip-efficiency or a demonstrated life of more than 4,000 cycles with only 5% capacity fade. The breakthrough came when the original experiment – the separation of chemical compounds, for which the gel was designed – actually failed. But it became clear that the gel’s ion-selective and transport properties could be employed in a zinc-bromide battery – and we never looked back. Things are really accelerating at Gelion. We have partnerships now in place for the manufacture and distribution of our zinc-bromide Endure batteries at a commercial scale. Our aim is to become a preferred international provider for safe, affordable and scalable renewable energy storage.
This year we are rolling out commercial customer demonstrations, for example, of desalination powered by solar/battery systems, with plans to go into larger scale manufacturing soon after that. We’ve also made real breakthroughs in developing performance additives for lithium batteries that should really help meet the expected surge in demand for electric vehicles, drones and planes over the next decade.
Plastic waste is another huge problem for the planet, but the catalytic hydrothermal reactor technology (CAT-HTR™) developed by Licella Holdings, a company I co-founded, can convert mixed end-of-life plastics that currently end up in landfill back into usable material. Our reactor system enables us to convert any organic polymer, be it biological or synthetic in origin, into gases, oils and waxes as well as bitumen additives. For plastics, the efficiency of the process is such that 98.5% of all the carbon in the feedstock ends up in products leaving our reactor. We make about 15% gas, which is used to run the process – so it is run on the waste itself.
The Eureka moment came when we confirmed our understanding that the transfer of hydrogen from the aqueous process medium into the products generated would stop cross-linking of these products. Therefore we had a suite of materials that did not need expensive hydrogen gas for their stabilisation. This transformed the economics of the process, leading to its global roll-out with partnerships such as Dow, Shell, Mitsubishi, KBR, Canfor and others. It’s incredibly exciting to see years of research enter the commercial sphere.
Our next great challenge? We are working to generate ammonia from sunshine and air via electrolysis that can compete with the traditional process, which feeds the world by making fertiliser but creates approximately 3% of all CO2 emissions. Our initial reactor looks promising!