Sunlight-Powered Waste-to-Value Conversion

📆 Date and time: Nov 01, 2024 03:00 PM Bangkok

✒️ Dr. Motiar Rahaman

Yusuf Hamied Department of Chemistry University of Cambridge, United

Kingdom

---

Energy crisis and global warming are the two most challenging issues that the world is facing today. Still, in the 21st century, the current global energy consumption is highly dependent on non-renewable fossil fuel resources like coal, oil, and natural gas. Technological and industrial advancements not only accelerate the consumption of fossil fuels but also result in escalated greenhouse gas (especially carbon dioxide, CO2) emissions into the atmosphere. Therefore, mitigating CO2 emissions and transitioning to a circular economy are urgent actions to safeguard our prosperous future. Carbon capture and utilization is a carbon-neutral process to recycle CO2 for the synthesis of valuable molecules powered by renewable energy. Plastic pollution, on the other hand, is another environmental concern, where most plastic recycling strategies are polluting or require a high energy input. Sunlight is the most abundant and exploitable energy source that can

power several waste-to-value transformations. Here, we demonstrate rational design of different photoelectrochemical systems for efficient solar-driven CO2 conversion and waste plastic upcycling into renewable fuels and chemicals. The development of efficient and scalable solar chemical technologies will lead us towards a sustainable, circular economy.