ACS Webinar - Innovating Everyday Chemicals with Green Chemistry: More Sustainable Lubricants, Solvents, and Fertilizers

Chemists across the industry and academia are driving innovation by integrating green chemistry and engineering principles into the design, manufacturing, and processes of chemicals. Join three recipients of the 2024 Green Chemistry Challenge Awards—a collaboration between the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s Office of Chemical Safety and Pollution Prevention and the American Chemical Society’s Green Chemistry Institute—as they share their impactful scientific achievements.

The $60 billion lubricant market spans applications from industrial machinery to everyday vehicles. Lubricant base oils, traditionally derived from petroleum, comprise 75-90% of these formulations. Dionisios Vlachos of the University of Delaware will discuss new synthetic methods to produce lubricant base oils using biobased feedstocks, such as plants or food waste, that provide comparable or better performance to existing technologies. Through heterogeneous catalysis, the new process also reduces the use of hazardous reagents, including corrosive acids, compared to existing bio-based lubricant production.

Ethanol is increasingly recognized as a promising feedstock for sustainable chemistry that significantly reduce the reliance on fossil fuels and its use in chemical production helps lower greenhouse gas emissions. Amit Hasabnis of the Viridis Chemical Company will discuss a greener synthetic method and more circular process design for ethyl acetate from corn bioethanol, instead of using chemicals acquired from processing coal or natural gas.

Traditional phosphate fertilizer production poses significant environmental challenges, including acid-based rock processing, hazardous gypsum waste with heavy metals and radioactivity, and fluorine emissions. Ed Gannon of PhoSul will introduce a new fertilizer consisting of spherical granules of phosphate rock combined with other materials that improve phosphate availability for plants. The additional materials allow the tricalcium phosphate in the phosphate rock, which is not available to plants, to be converted into available forms in the soil.

What You Will Learn

• How the development of three classes of bio-lubricant base oils with different properties can comparable or better performance to existing technologies
• The impact of green hydrogen technology and how the dehydrogenation of Bio-Ethanol to Ethyl Acetate can supply about 40% of the manufacturing facility’s energy requirements
• How an organically enhanced rock phosphate fertilizer can eliminate the need for acid processing, reduce waste, and deliver superior performance compared to conventional phosphate rock fertilizers
• What are the Green Chemistry Challenge Awards and when is the nomination process for your next opportunity to win the award