photo by: KU Office of Research

Bala Subramaniam and Nakisha Mark, postdoctoral researcher, examine a scientific instrument.

A team of University of Kansas scientists was awarded a $10 million grant to study the interactions of complex chemical mixtures in order to advance sustainable chemical manufacturing, many of which end up in everyday products.

The grant, awarded by the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation, will help the scientists establish a research hub that will focus on developing design principles and make the extraction of such chemicals more sustainable, according to a university press release.

Bala Subramaniam, professor of chemical and energy engineering and director emeritus of KU’s Center for Environmentally Beneficial Catalysis, will lead the research hub, named Decoding Mixtures for Sustainable Transformations (DeMiST). He will be joined by other KU faculty, as well as colleagues at universities in the United Kingdom and Canada.

“The goal of DeMiST is to understand the behavior of complex chemical mixtures that occur in nature and in chemical processes,” Subramaniam said. “We want to achieve that at a fundamental level so that we are able to deliberately control their properties to engineer green chemical technologies.”

Everyday products are made from raw materials, referred to as feedstock, with crude oil being the primary feedstock responsible for the majority of products in the economy, according to the press release. But other types of feedstocks besides crude oil, called alternative feedstock, are harder to extract without risking toxicity. These alternative feedstocks include agriculture and forestry leftovers such as corn stalks, municipal solid waste, recycled plastics and even greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide.

Because of their complexity, they cannot be easily converted into everyday products. “Efforts to transform them to the products of everyday life have met with only limited success so far,” Subramaniam said.

That’s what he and his team of researchers are hoping to change.

“The access to state-of-the-art research tools at KU and our partner institutions is really what makes this prospect for expeditious discovery and innovation possible and exciting,” Subramaniam said.

According to the release, KU was specifically chosen for the grant because of its earth, energy and environment research, and after Paul Anastas, who serves as the program director of the Green Chemistry Initiative at the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation, approached Subramaniam about the initiative earlier this year. The foundation has funded three additional international hubs, along with KU, that will complement the university’s research by investigating other challenges related to sustainable chemical manufacturing.

“The research that Bala and his team are doing will build the scientific foundation for a more sustainable future,” said Shelley Hooks, KU’s vice chancellor for research. “This is just one of the many ways KU researchers are taking on fundamental challenges that matter in Kansas and around the world.”

Subramaniam said the funding solves major challenges to create a green economy by funding research that is too risky for private companies to invest in without sufficient proof-of-concept, according to the release.