Project Members

Prof. Christopher Saffron (Collaborator)

Dr. Mikhail Redko

Davina Spears

Jackson

Dr. Mikhail Redko’s research directions


Project Overview

    Dr. Redko, who holds title of Ph.D. in Inorganic Chemistry, is working on development of commercially viable chemical and electrochemical processes converting renewable bioresources into products of added value. The main processes of interest, where substantial advances have already been made, are:

  • Fast biomass pyrolysis converting wood biomass into a liquid mixture of low-molecular weight compounds. Those compounds are used as building blocks in the subsequent syntheses of chemicals and fuels.
  • Mild biomass deconstruction. Plant biomass consists of lignin, hemicellulose and cellulose, bound to each other into a mechanically robust material. We have demonstrated processes that either separate those components or selectively convert them into liquids or soluble low- molecular weight products.
  • Hydrogenation, electrohydrogenation and other transformations of the biomass-derived liquids (bio-oil, depolymerized lignin extracts, solutions of carbohydrates) into fuels and precursors to regular polymers.

    The general directions we are pursuing now are:

  • Development of catalytic systems for cellulose hydrolysis into glucose.
  • Glucose transformations into polymers.
  • Streamlining of the chemical transformations – so that the new materials be made out of the raw biomass in few simple steps. That simplicity is the key factor to make the biomass-derived products cost-competitive with their analogs currently made out of petroleum.
Dr. Redko and the students he supervises are a subgroup of two groups – Dr. Jackson’s (Department of Chemistry) and Dr. Saffron’s (Biosystems and Agricyltural Engineering).

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