Project Grant 83469901

This Project Grant from the National Science Foundation's Mathematical and Physical Sciences program provides $689,738 to Clemson University from August 2022 through July 2025 to research sustainable recycling methods for agricultural and plastic waste via organosulfur chemistry. Professor Rhett Smith and students will study reaction pathways between elemental sulfur and functional groups in waste plastics like polyethylene terephthalate and polycarbonates, as well as lignin, to facilitate...

This $300,000 Project Grant awarded by the USDA's Agriculture and Food Research Initiative (CFDA 10.310) aims to demonstrate the feasibility of producing chirally pure (R)-3-hydroxybutyrate (R-3HB) from plant waste materials, such as wood and crop leftovers, by modifying Clostridium pathways. The research will create and test two different R-3HB production pathways in Clostridium, then combine and further optimize the approaches to boost R-3HB yields in the bacterium. If successful, this work...

This Project Grant from the National Science Foundation Division of Chemistry, under the Mathematical and Physical Sciences program (CFDA 47.049), provides $353,295 to the University of Tennessee from August 1, 2022 to July 31, 2025. The funding supports research by Dr. Sirius Laursen and students to develop inexpensive, earth-abundant catalysts from non-noble metal intermetallic compounds for the conversion of waste from biomass processing into valuable diols and olefins. Through quantum...

This Project Grant award of $590,484 from the National Science Foundation's (NSF) Mathematical and Physical Sciences program (CFDA 47.049) will support research by Dr. Rhett C. Smith of Clemson University to investigate a new method for converting agricultural and plastic waste into useful materials through a process called "thiocracking." The research aims to address challenges in waste disposal, including plastics, agricultural residues, and mixed-material waste, while using excess...

This $250,000 Project Grant award from the National Science Foundation (NSF) Engineering program (CFDA 47.041) supports a collaborative research effort to investigate the use of CO2-H2O mixtures as a tunable media to improve the chemical recycling of poly(ethylene) terephthalate (PET) plastic waste. The primary objectives are to (1) elucidate the impact of CO2 on PET polymer morphology, phase behavior, and reagent transport during acid-catalyzed hydrolysis, and (2) understand the...

This Project Grant award of $538,791 from the National Science Foundation's Engineering program (CFDA 47.041) will fund research by the University of Colorado to develop novel electrocatalysts for converting bio-derived carboxylic acids, such as lactic acid, into alcohols like propylene glycol. The goal is to create a more sustainable alternative to current petrochemical-based processes for manufacturing high-volume commodity chemicals. The project will explore using...

This Project Grant award of $416,087 from the National Science Foundation's (NSF) Engineering program (CFDA 47.041) is funding a collaborative research project between Oregon State University and Tulane University. The research aims to better understand and improve catalysts used in olefin metathesis reactions, which are an important pathway for making precursor molecules for polymers and plastics from waste plastics or renewable materials. The project will use a combination of experiments and...

This $150,000 Project Grant award from the National Science Foundation (NSF) Engineering program (CFDA 47.041) supports a collaborative research effort led by Elizabeth City State University (ECSU), an HBCU institution, and Old Dominion University. The project aims to develop a novel chemical process that can simultaneously clean organic contaminants from wastewater and generate methanol, which can then be used for wastewater denitrification. The process utilizes biocatalytic enzymes to...

This $800,000 Project Grant awarded by the USDA National Institute of Food and Agriculture (NIFA) under the Agriculture and Food Research Initiative (AFRI) program, will develop a robust and scalable processing platform for converting food waste into high surface area carbon materials for use in supercapacitors. The project will apply a hydrothermal carbonization method to capture the organic carbon from food waste, and then thermochemically activate the resulting hydrochar to produce high...

The National Science Foundation (NSF) Engineering program (CFDA 47.041) has awarded a $463,136 Project Grant to the University of Massachusetts Lowell to explore a hybrid approach to upcycling waste polyethylene (PE) into value-added chemicals. The two-step process involves oxidative catalytic pyrolysis to decompose PE into intermediate products, followed by bioconversion using engineered yeast to produce nylon precursors and other platform chemicals. The research aims to develop an economical...