Considered to be the first of its kind to happen in Asia is a collaborative multidisciplinary research project among three countries - Japan, Thailand and the Philippines addressing regional and global issues on functional nanocarbon-based catalysts for a unified goal of developing a biomass-centered economy in Asia.
The collaborative project in the field of functional materials is under the framework of the e-ASIA Joint Research Project (e-ASIA JRP) in accelerating science and technology research exchange and collaboration in the East Asian region. It aims to strengthen research and development capabilities towards resolution of shared challenges across the region, including those associated with environmental protection, natural disaster mitigation and infectious diseases prevention. As part of this objective, the e-ASIA JRP intends to support collaborative research implemented among three or more of the member countries in agreed fields of research. The overarching goal of e-ASIA JRP is to contribute to economic and human resource development, as well as the resolution of various challenges in the East Asian region. (read more: http://www.the-easia.org/jrp/).
With the approval of the e-ASIA Board, the premier science and technology agencies of each country, namely: The Japan Science and Technology Agency (JST) (http://www.jst.go.jp/EN/index.html), the National Science and Technology Development Agency of Thailand (NSTDA) (http://www.nstda.or.th/eng/), and the Department of Science and Technology (DOST) (http://www.dost.gov.ph/) of the Philippines have agreed to support the collaborative research project entitled “Development of Functional Nanocarbon-Based Catalysts for Biomass Conversion Processes” starting November 2014 until 2017.
This project aims to synthesize nanocarbon materials such as graphene oxide, carbon nanotube and hydrothermal carbon, and utilize them for efficient conversion of vast biomass resources available in Southeast Asian region into useful compounds under special reaction field of supercritical fluid and microwave irradiation.
In coming with this objective, the three countries agreed to divide the development of the functionalized carbon-based catalysts according to their expertise, as follows: 1) functionalized grapheme – Japan team; 2) functionalized hydrothermal nanocarbons – Thailand team, and 3) functionalized carbon nanotube – Philippine team.
The countries have also planned out how each one will synergistically work using available resources in terms of technology, laboratory, and raw materials. The Thai and Philippine teams will visit Japan for the use of supercritical fluid facilities in Kumamoto University as well as state-of-the-art analytical facilities in Japan like transmission electron microscope (TEM), differential scanning calorimeter (DSC), field emission scanning electron microscope (FE-SEM), among others. On the other hand, Thai and Japanese teams will seek the expertise of the Philippine team on life cycle analysis (LCA) of the proposed processes, carbon nanotube production, microalgae production and biodiesel production from various seeds. The Thai team is expected to grow microalgae and provide samples to both the Philippine and Japanese teams. With the abundance of non-food competing bio-feedstocks, the Philippines will provide non-edible oil from kenaf and kakawate seed oil.
Records show that the Asian region has abundant biomass resources (with 87EJ corresponding to 2.3 billion kilo-liters of petroleum (or 2.3 trillion liters of petroleum). It is for this reason that there is a growing need in East Asia to exploit in a more sustainable way the vast available bioresources and to utilize waste biomass, including agricultural, industrial and forestry wastes. In the long term, development benefits starting from local communities and expanding into the whole region will emerge from the adoption of sound industrial practices of biomass-based science and innovation. In this context, a new industry based on bio-feedstocks will play a key role.
The research project focuses on the application of functionalized carbo-catalysts to processes involving biomass conversion to chemicals and fuel. But other than biomass conversion, the long-term outlook would include applications to other reactions such as polymerization, oxidation, photo-oxidation and hydration. Applications to development of photovoltaic cells for energy and as “drug carrier” for biomedical applications are also foreseen.
At the helm of the research teams are experts with special strengths honed from various research activities and experience. Professor Tetsuya Kida, Professor, Department of Applied Chemistry and Biochemistry, Kumamoto University in Japan leads the Japanese team. He has been working on the syntheses of nanomaterials and their applications to catalysis, gas sensors, solar cells, and batteries. He has developed metal oxide-based nanomaterials for a wide variety of applications. In particular, he has been working on photocatalysis for more than 10 years to produce hydrogen by water splitting and to purify wasterwater by organic decomposition. He is currently engaged in the development of inorganic-organic homogenous catalyst to recover noble metals from waste solutions.
The Thai research team is led by Dr. Artiwan Shotipruk, Associate Professor, Department of Chemical Engineering, Faculty of Engineering, Chulalongkorn University in Thailand. The special strength of the team is their established knowledge on catalyst synthesis and process development for biomass pretreatment/fractionation and biomass conversion via catalytic thermochemical and biochemical reactions.
On the other hand, the Filipino research team is spearheaded by Professor Joseph Auresenia of the Chemical Engineering Department, College of Engineering, De La Salle University (DLSU)-Manila. He has been working on carbon nanotube (CNT) production using microwave-induced chemical vapor deposition (MWCVD) for almost 10 years now. Among his other researches are on production of grapheme from graphite, application of CNT on dye-sensitized solar cells (DSSC) for direct conversion of solar energy to electrical energy and photo-bioreactors to produce algal biomass which is converted to biodiesel by direct transesterification. Prof. Auresenia is assisted by experienced and renowned researchers in the field of chemical engineering at the DLSU.
The multidisciplinary research project and its outputs are seen to create a paradigm shift towards a new science and innovation perspective in the region, and is expected to have high impact to the rest of the world.(Maria Elena A. Talingdan, DOST-PCIEERD).
