The energy crisis, environmental pollution and global warming are serious problems that are of great concern throughout the world. Around 40% of the world’s energy consumption is dedicated to the production of materials and chemicals. Thus, there is a need to develop high-performance materials based on renewable resources, simpler to synthesize and being more cost effective. Carbon materials derived from renewable resources (e.g., waste biomass) are ideal candidates to meet these needs.
The main objective of GreenCarbon is to develop new scientific knowledge, capability, technology, and commercial products for biomass-derived carbons (BCs); thus impacting the way that Europe uses and innovates with sustainable carbon materials. The research programme of GreenCarbon comprehensively covers all aspects from precursors (the nature of biomass) to processing (thermochemical conversion, porosity development, chemical functionalization) and application (e.g., CO2 capture, heterogeneous catalysis and chemicals from biomass) enabling a unique design of engineered sustainable BC materials.
At the same time, the training programme of GreenCarbon is designed with the aim to empower the ESRs through the provision of a comprehensive and coherent training package, which includes complementary competencies and knowledge in all the science, engineering and business skills so as to be capable of deploying new technologies within different environments both inside and outside of academia.