Sustainable Catalysis

Sustainable Catalysis (SusCat) represents an international research project that develops novel organic catalysts, which efficiently drive the production of synthetic fuels for instance from CO 2 as feedstock. State-of-the-art catalysis often relies on transition metals such as platinum or tungsten compounds materials, which are scarce and potentially expensive, in particular when considering their consequent industrial scale-up for a carbon-neutral energy future. Conse- quently SusCat seeks an alternative solution and pursues organic sustainable catalytic materi- als, which drive the fuel production least as efficient without consuming critical elements. The idea is simple motifs and themes from enzymology are incorporated into semiconducting pol- ymers. As such, the researchers Philipp Stadler and Tsukasa Yoshida from the Johannes Kep- ler University Austria and Yamagata University Japan mimic nature and thus create sustainable catalytic materials, which are electrically-conductive and catalytically active. Similar to best-in- class transition metal systems, these bio-functional polymers transfer electricity to fuel efficient- ly. The researchers have already demonstrated materials that operate on par with state-of-the- art electrocatalyts. Now, their project SusCat ties their excellence to advance these materials for instance by incorporation new enzymatic themes in order to extend their applicability. This con- cept could be universally utilized for manifold synthesis reaction, where high catalytic activity is required and where nature provides a template. The main goal of SusCat, however, is to estab- lish a sustainable catalytic cycle for synthetic fuels thereby harnessing the power of enzymatic motifs in artificial synthesis and thereby involving solely abundant organic matter.

The international joint project "Sustainable Catalysis" pursued the development of a new catalyst generation that is free from metals and of bio-origin. The main concept relied on prior art, where biopolymers such as polydopamine demonstrated state-of-the-art catalytic activity similar to classic metals such as platinum. The principal investigators at Yamagata University and the University of Linz, Philipp Stadler and Tsukasa Yoshida, discovered new biopolymers and explored their application fields towards CO2 Recycling and hydrogen evolution as well as, beyond the state-of-the-art, towards hydrogen storage. These new findings represent a major thrust to replace critical elements by functional biopolymer materials and will facilitate renewable energy storage by a novel generation of sustainable catalysts.