RSC Chemical Feedstocks for Sustainable Industry 2024

The RSC’s Burlington House in London played host to the two-day Chemical Feedstocks for Sustainable Industry event on 12-13 December 2024. The symposium brought together experts from across academia and industry to focus on three topic areas: Small Molecule Feedstocks, Circular Plastics, and Sustainable Chemicals from Underutilized Biomass.

The SCHEMA Hub is delighted to have co-organised the event and chaired the session on Small Molecule Feedstocks, which featured insightful discussions on sustainable catalysis for small molecule utilization and management, as well as intellectual property and policy trends in sustainable chemicals and materials. SCHEMA Hub Co-investigator Prof. Graham Hutchings got proceedings underway with an excellent lecture on the current challenges in catalytic science to achieve a net-zero world.

A key contribution to the success of the event was the strong engagement from industry, with representatives from various sectors, including from Topsoe, HydRegen, Unilever, BBIA, Johnson Matthey, LabCycle, Sonichem, and Futamura, presenting their developments and perspectives across the three sessions. In the Small Molecule Feedstocks session, invited speakers Dr Sarah Cleary (HydRegen) presented on biocatalytic hydrogenation technology, Dr Ronan Bellabarba (Topsoe) discussed innovations in catalysis to facilitate sustainable chemical processes, and Dr Jen Vanderhoven (BBIA) gave her perspective on policy and regulation for accelerating the commercialisation of sustainable chemicals and materials.