From Wetlands to Wonder: Turning Biomass into Green Chemistry
- Beschreibung
The Industrial Revolution triggered a sharp rise in greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, intensifying global warming. In response, nations promoted agreements and bioeconomy investments to integrate sustainability with economic growth.
Lignocellulosic biomass plays a key role in Germany’s Paludiculture, which restores wet meadows to mitigate GHG emissions. By preventing soil drainage and reducing machinery use, this approach preserves carbon stocks and enhances oxygen production.
Additionally, lignocellulosic biomass supports platform chemical synthesis, including furfural and HMF, essential for chemical, pharmaceutical, and food industries. However, extraction remains challenging, requiring process optimization.
This study explores platform chemical production from Paludiculture biomass, assessing diluted acid catalysis under varying conditions to improve efficiency.
The working plan is divided into four main tasks:
1) What are hydrothermal reactions? In this task, you will be responsible for reading papers and references and constructing a base to understand the hydrothermal reactions. With the basis knowledge, you will be able to understand and propose reaction conditions regarding mainly the acid catalyst content.
2) How to perform hydrothermal reactions? You will perform the hydrothermal reactions starting from the biomass preparation, followed by the reactions at different acid concentrations.
3) How to analyse the products from this reaction? You will prepare solid and liquid samples from the reaction performed, experiencing the analytical part of the process using techniques such as high-performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) and others.
4) What is the effect of the acid concentration on the Paludiculture biomass? Based on the obtained data, you will analyze the results, identify trends, and formulate hypotheses regarding the acid concentration effect in the Paludiculture biomass hydrothermal reactions and discuss potential applications.
- Projektzeitraum
- Sommersemester 2025
- Bewerbungszeitraum
- 01. bis 13.04.2025
- Durchführung
- semesterbegleitend
- Studienfach
- offen für alle Studienfächer
- Betreuende
- Jeferson Felipe Rio Vicente
- Institut
- Institut für Agrartechnik (440) (Conversion Technologies of Biobased Resources (440f))
- Sprache
- deutsch/englisch
- Teilnehmendenanzahl
-
min. 1, max. 3
(1 Kleingruppen mit max. 3 Teilnehmenden ) - Arbeitsaufwand
-
ca. 120 Stunden pro Teilnehmende:r
| 4
ECTS-Punkte
Arbeitsaufwand (Stunden und ggf. ECTS) sind ungefähre Angaben. Die tatsächlich vergebenen ECTS-Punkte ergeben sich aus der tatsächlich geleisteten Arbeit.
- Für dieses Projekt ist kein Motivationsschreiben des Studierenden erforderlich
- Projektart
- experimentell
- Lernziele
-
Die Teilnehmende lernen in diesem Projekt:
- Perform literature research and obtain knowledge of a scientific area
- Perform biomass pretreatment and hydrothermal reactions
- Basics of working in a laboratory
- Quantitative and qualitative organic chemistry analysis
- Obtaining and analyzing self-obtained data
- Presentation of obtained results using graphs and tables
- Anmerkungen für Studierende
For further questions regarding the project, contact me via email: jeferson.riovicente@uni-hohenheim.de
- Schlagworte
- platform chemicals, Paludiculture, acid catalysis, HMF, Furfural