The biorefinery of the future should enable the meaningful integration of abundantly available renewable resources and waste-streams into the circular economy. This requires new ways of processing and depolymerization, and efficient downstream conversion pathways, centered around fundamental questions in chemical catalysis. The new methods should embrace the inherent complexity and recalcitrance of these resources, and display superior activity, selectivity, robustness as well as high atom-economy. These relevant scientific findings need to be translated into industrial applications in order to facilitate real impact on pollution prevention, and mitigate carbon emissions. Therefore, we need to be particularly concerned with our target products.

Envisioning the biorefinery of the future, in our opinion, relies on our capacity to create an entirely new chemical space of emerging, sustainable bio-products, designed according to circularity and sustainability principles.

Imagine a future where polymeric materials, including thermosets, are entirely bio-based, inherently robust but recyclable on demand. Where newly designed surfactants significantly outperform commercially available analogues, and are fully biodegradable. Where structurally sophisticated biologically active molecules take only a few waste-free steps to make from natural resources.  In this talk I will detail our initial attempts towards achieving these goals and the challenges encountered along the way.

Katalin Barta is professor of Chemistry at the University of Graz, Austria. She started her independent career in 2013 at the Stratingh Institute for Chemistry, University of Groningen. Her research program addresses key scientific questions to enable the transition to a bio-based, circular economy. This involves catalyst and method development, alternative solvents and the development of biorefinery concepts, focusing on lignocellulosic biomass, especially in the area of ‘lignin-first’ chemistry. Special focus is devoted to the development of novel routes to emerging bio-based products, including pharmaceutically active compounds, surfactants, fuels, as well as recyclable polymers and materials.

Her work has been recognized by grants and awards, including the Phoenix Prize (2023), Styria Innovation Award (2022), the ACS Sustainable Chemistry & Engineering Lectureship Award (2020), the Netherlands Catalysis and Chemistry Conference Award (2019). She is recipient of three ERC Grants (2015 StG, 2019 PoC, 2023 CoG), as well as the EIC Transition Grant, and is member of the new Austrian Cluster of Excellence ‘Circular Bioengineering’.

She serves as chair of the division Green and Sustainable Chemistry of the EuChemSoc, chair of the editorial board of ChemSusChem, and was co-chair of the Gordon Conference on Lignin valorization 2022.