From biomass to catalysts and chemicals: exploiting blood and food waste towards high-value products.
The aim of this proposal is to make universal and low-cost catalysts from industrial waste and apply them to biomass upgrading. To that end, we will make single atomic FeNx sites supported on carbon (FeNx@C) that have seen tremendous development in organic chemistry in the past 5 years. Indeed, they are active for both oxidations and reductions, and constitute promising substitutes for toxic, scarce and costly platinum-group metals (PGM). Yet major challenges remain in the field: first we need to find new routes to drastically lower the footprint of their synthesis. Here we will adopt a bio-inspired approach and use inexpensive hemoproteins as precursors: they naturally contain four pre-built FeNx sites (hemes) per unit. Hemoproteins can be extracted from blood in slaughterhouse waste. We will use the resulting catalysts for the upgrading of key biomass-derived platform molecules: 5-hydroxymethylfurfural (5-HMF), levulinic acid (LA), and other biomass-derived alcohols.

The reductive and oxidative potency of FeNx@C will be first explored separately, then sequentially for alcohol direct conversion to amines. Due to their heterogeneous nature, FeNx