Science to enable the circular economy

This lecture will describe recent work from our laboratory aimed at developing new biocatalysts for enantioselective organic synthesis, with emphasis on the design of in vitro and in vivo cascade processes for generating chiral pharmaceutical building blocks. By applying the principles of ‘biocatalytic retrosynthesis’ we have shown that it is increasingly possible to design new synthetic routes to target molecules in which biocatalysts are used in the key bond forming steps.

The integration of several biocatalytic transformations into multi-enzyme cascade systems, both in vitro and in vivo, will be addressed in the lecture. In this context monoamine oxidase (MAO-N) has been used in combination with other biocatalysts and chemocatalysts in order to complete a cascade of enzymatic reactions. Other engineered biocatalysts that can be used in the context of cascade reactions include w-transaminases, ammonia lyases, amine dehydrogenases, imine reductases, and artificial transfer hydrogenases. We shall also present recent work regarding the discovery of a new biocatalyst for enantioselective reductive amination and show how these enzymes can be used to carry out redox neutral amination of alcohols via ‘hydrogen borrowing’.

Professor Nicholas Turner, University of Manchester, UK

Professor Nicholas Turner, University of Manchester, UK

Nick Turner obtained his DPhil in 1985 with Professor Sir Jack Baldwin and from 1985-1987 was a Royal Society Junior Research Fellow, spending time at Harvard University with Professor George Whitesides. He was appointed lecturer in 1987 at Exeter University and moved to Edinburgh in 1995, initially as a Reader and subsequently Professor in 1998. In October 2004 he joined Manchester University as Professor of Chemical Biology where his research group is located in the Manchester Institute of Biotechnology Biocentre (MIB: www.mib.ac.uk). He is Director of the Centre of Excellence in Biocatalysis (CoEBio3) (www.coebio3.org) and also a co-founder and Scientific Director of Ingenza (www.ingenza.com), a spin-out biocatalysis company based in Edinburgh and more recently Discovery Biocatalysts. He is a member of the Editorial Board of ChemCatChem and Advanced Synthesis and Catalysis. His research interests are in the area of biocatalysis with particular emphasis on the discovery and development of novel enzyme catalysed reactions for applications in organic synthesis. His group are also interested in the application of directed evolution technologies for the development of biocatalysts with tailored functions.

The global production of plastics made from non-renewable fossil feedstocks has grown more than 20-fold since 1964. While more than eight billion metric tons of plastics have been produced until today, only a small fraction is currently collected for recycling and large amounts of plastic waste are ending up in landfills or in the oceans. Pollution caused by accumulating plastic waste in the environment has therefore become world-wide a very serious problem.

Synthetic polyesters such as polyethylene terephthalate (PET) have widespread use in packaging materials, beverage bottles, foams, coatings, and fibers. Recently it has been shown that amorphous PET materials can be completely hydrolyzed by microbial enzymes at mild reaction conditions in aqueous media. Due to the restricted mobility of the polymer chains at ambient temperatures, an efficient biocatalytic degradation has to be performed close to the glass transition temperature of PET of about 70°C. Thermostable enzymes like those produced by actinomycete bacteria have therefore emerged as the most promising catalysts for the hydrolysis of PET to its monomeric building blocks. In a circular economy, the resulting monomers can be recovered and reused to manufacture novel PET again or other products without depleting fossil feedstocks. The enzymatic degradation of post-consumer plastic waste thereby represents an innovative, environmentally benign, and sustainable alternative to conventional chemical recycling processes. By the construction of powerful biocatalysts employing protein engineering techniques and an optimization of the bioprocess parameters, a biocatalytic recycling of PET can be further developed towards industrial applications.

Professor Wolfgang Zimmermann, Leipzig University, Germany

Professor Wolfgang Zimmermann, Leipzig University, Germany

Born 1953 in Heidelberg, Germany. Studied biochemistry, microbiology, and chemistry at the Medizinisch-Naturwissenschaftliche Hochschule Ulm and at the University of Heidelberg, receiving his Diplom degree in 1981 and doctorate in 1984 from the Universität Heidelberg. From 1985 to 1987 post-doctoral fellow in biochemistry at the University of Manchester, Institute of Science and Technology, UK. From 1988 to 1993 assistant professor and head of the Enzyme Technology Section at the Department of Biotechnology, Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zürich, Switzerland. From 1993 to 1999 Professor in Biotechnology at Aalborg University, Denmark and from 1999 to 2004 Professor and Chair in Bioprocess Technology at Chemnitz University of Technology, Germany. Since 2005 Professor and Chair in Microbiology and Bioprocess Technology, Universität Leipzig, Germany.

Two of the grand societal and technological challenges of the twenty first century are the 'greening' of chemicals manufacture and the ongoing transition to a bio-based economy: that is a sustainable, carbon-neutral economy based on renewable biomass as the raw material. These challenges are motivated by the need to eliminate environmental degradation and mitigate climate change. Waste minimisation and waste valorisation in a circular economy constitute a point of overlap of these grand challenges. In a bio-based economy, ideally waste biomass, particularly agricultural and forestry residues and food supply chain waste, are converted to liquid fuels, commodity chemicals, and biopolymers by employing clean, catalytic processes.

Biocatalysis has the right credentials to achieve this goal. Enzymes are biocompatible (sometimes even edible), biodegradable and essentially non-hazardous. Additionally, they are derived from inexpensive renewable resources which are readily available and not subject to the large price fluctuations which undermine the long term commercial viability of catalysts derived from scarce precious metals. Moreover, thanks to spectacular advances in molecular biology the landscape of biocatalysis has dramatically changed in the last two decades. Developments in (meta)genomics in combination with 'big data' analysis have revolutionised new enzyme discovery and developments in protein engineering by directed evolution have enabled dramatic improvements in their performance. These developments have their confluence in the bio-based circular economy.

Professor Roger Sheldon FRS

Professor Roger Sheldon FRS

Roger Sheldon is a recognised authority on green chemistry and catalysis and is widely known for developing the concept of E factors for assessing the environmental footprint of chemical processes. He is Professor Emeritus of Biocatalysis and Organic Chemistry of Delft University of Technology and Chief Executive Officer of CLEA Technologies. He is the author of several books on catalysis as well as more than 450 professional papers and 50 granted patents. His research interests are in the general area of green chemistry, (bio)catalysis and enzyme immobilisation.

He has a PhD in organic chemistry from the University of Leicester (UK) and prior to joining Delft University, in 1991, he had more than 20 years industrial experience, as Vice President for Research and Development at DSM/Andeno from 1980 to 1990 and with Shell Research Amsterdam from 1969 to 1980.

Enzymes are powerful catalysts for selective oxidation and reduction reactions, but one of the barriers to the scale-up of biocatalysis for bulk chemical transformations is the reliance of many of these enzymes on expensive nicotinamide cofactors, NADH or NADPH. The cost and complexity of these cofactors mean that they must be continuously recycled during chemical transformations. Recycling of the reduced cofactors is typically achieved using glucose as a sacrificial oxidant (hydride donor), generating substantial carbon-based waste. This talk will explore alternative, cleaner possibilities for recycling the reduced cofactors for reductive chemical synthesis, using hydrogen gas or electrochemical processes as the reductant for NADH or NADPH. Further, we show that immobilisation of the cofactor recycling system, together with the enzyme of interest, on a solid support offers advantages for scale-up and re-use of biocatalysts in batch reactors, and possibilities for implementing biocatalysis in continuous flow reactors. Developments in these areas will be critical in enabling biocatalysis to move beyond the small-volume, fine chemicals sector so that enzymes can play a significant role in circular transformations of commodity chemicals in a sustainable future economy

Professor Kylie Vincent, University of Oxford, UK

Professor Kylie Vincent, University of Oxford, UK

Kylie Vincent is Professor of Inorganic Chemistry, and Fellow of Jesus College Oxford at the University of Oxford. Her research interests include mechanistic studies of small-molecule activation in metalloenzymes, and new ways of applying biocatalysis in chemical synthesis. She is a graduate of the University of Melbourne, Australia (BA/ BSc (Hons), PhD) and has worked in Oxford since 2002 when she joined the group of Fraser Armstrong as a postdoctoral researcher and an RJP Williams Junior Research Fellowship at Wadham College. In 2007 she took up a Royal Society University Research Fellowship and was appointed as Associate Professor in 2013 and Professor in 2017. Her team won the Royal Society of Chemistry’s Emerging Technologies competition in 2013 for development of HydRegen, a platform technology for hydrogen-driven biocatalysis, and she won the Clara Immerwahr Award for Excellence in Catalysis Research in 2012 and was named Woman of the Future in Science and Technology in 2011. 

The concept of circular economy has emerged in response to the need for decoupling the economic growth from resource consumption and environmental impacts. Aiming to maximise resource efficiency, it represents an alternative to the current linear ‘take-make-use-dispose’ economic model. The circular economy concept rests on three fundamental principles: i) preserving and enhancing natural capital; i) circulating products and materials at the highest utility as long as possible; and iii) designing out negative externalities. Therefore, transitioning to a circular economy will require a systemic change across supply chains, involving both technological and business model innovations. This in turn will necessitate a whole systems approach and life cycle thinking to capture and address the complex interrelationships between different aspects of a circular economy. One of the complexities is that ‘circular’ does not necessarily mean ‘sustainable’. Hence, we need to be able to understand the full implications of a switch from the ‘linear’ to ‘circular’ economic models. Focusing on environmental impacts of that switch, this presentation will discuss how we can measure the ‘circularity’ on a life cycle basis and what that may mean in practice, considering examples in the food, energy and plastics sectors.

Professor Adisa Azapagic, The University of Manchester, UK

Professor Adisa Azapagic, The University of Manchester, UK

Adisa Azapagic is Professor of Sustainable Chemical Engineering at the University of Manchester where she leads the Sustainable Industrial Systems group. The main aim of her research is to help identify sustainable solutions for industrial systems on a life cycle basis, taking into account economic, environmental and social aspects. Adisa is the founding Editor-in-Chief of Sustainable Production and Consumption and Editor-in-Chief of Process Safety and Environmental Protection, both published by Elsevier on behalf of the IChemE. She was a recipient of the IChemE Award for Outstanding Achievements in Chemical and Process Engineering and the GSK/CIA Innovation Award for masterminding the CCaLC carbon footprinting tool for industry.

In the last decades the application of enzymes for enantioselective syntheses has made its way to industrial use. BASF has led this development with its Chipros® product line of chiral intermediates with a particular focus on chiral amines. However, the horizon for enzymatic catalysis is now reaching beyond pharma intermediates. Biocatalysis application reaches to volume chemicals with a much larger leverage on resource efficiency. Opportunities to combine enzyme catalysis with renewable feed-stock are even greater. A carefully balanced view on how enzyme catalysis can support a circular economy and can actually lead to a more sustainable industry will be given.

Dr Kai Baldenius, BASF SE, Germany

Dr Kai Baldenius, BASF SE, Germany

Kai Baldenius is a chemist by formation. After receiving a PhD from Hamburg University, he spent a post-doc research year at The Scripps Research Institute before he joined BASF in 1993.  In BASF Kai started his career in the central research doing process development work for vitamins and other fine chemicals. He took over responsibilities in production, marketing and sales, before he returned to research. Since 2009, Kai heads the BASF biocatalysis research group.

In the past two centuries, science and engineering provided the basis for the development of new technologies, which dramatically improved the life of mankind all over the world. In this respect, chemistry and catalysis significantly contributed to better health, more food, clean water, new materials and so on. Nevertheless, despite these developments, still we face significant problems in the coming years. In this context, the sustainable use of resources and especially the reduction of fossil-based feedstocks are key issues. In the talk, the importance of chemistry and specifically catalysis for achieving a circular economy will be explained. Necessary catalytic advancements will be discussed for case studies such as the valorization of carbon dioxide for fuel production and chemical synthesis. Next to this, the presentation will give some insight on the potential of nanotechnology-derived catalysts and molecularly-defined catalyst systems for sufficient and sustainable supply of energy.

Professor Matthias Beller, Leibniz Institute for Catalysis, Germany

Professor Matthias Beller, Leibniz Institute for Catalysis, Germany

Matthias Beller studied chemistry at the University of Göttingen, where he completed his PhD thesis in 1989. As recipient of a Liebig scholarship he then spent a one-year with Sharpless at MIT. Afterwards he worked in industry until 1995, when he moved to the TU of Munich as Professor for Inorganic Chemistry. In 1998, he relocated to Rostock to head the Institute for Organic Catalysis, which became in 2006 the Leibniz-Institute for Catalysis. The work of his group has been published in more than 900 original publications, reviews and more than 130 patent applications have been filed / H-index: 124. Matthias Beller was honoured with a number of awards including the Otto-Roelen Medal, the Leibniz-Price and the German Federal Cross of Merit. Besides, he received the first European prize for Sustainable Chemistry, the Paul N Rylander Award of the Organic Reaction Catalysis Society of the USA, the Gay Lussac Alexander von Humboldt Prize of the French Academy of Sciences and the Emil Fischer Medal of the German Chemical Society. He was awarded an honorary doctoral degree from the University of Antwerp and of the University of Rennes 1. He received the Wöhler price for Sustainable Chemistry from the German Chemical Society and an ERC Advanced grant from the European Commission. In 2017, Matthias Beller was awarded the Karl Ziegler Prize from the German Chemical Society and the Karl Ziegler Foundation, one of the highest honors in the field of chemistry in Germany. He has received as the first European chemist with the ACS Catalysis Award Lectureship. Last year, Beller was selected as the prestigious “Hassel Lecturer” from the University of Oslo and for the “Gordon Stone Lectureship” of the University of Bristol as well. Beller is Vice President of the Leibniz Society and member of the German National Academy of Science Leopoldina and three other Academies of Sciences.