Green and Sustainable Chemistry

On the evening of Thursday 24 February 2022 RSC Belgium opened its 2022 programme with a webinar talk from RSC President Professor Tom Welton OBE on Green and Sustainable Chemistry.

In the presentation Tom discussed the development of the complimentary ideas of Green Chemistry and Sustainable Chemistry. He showed how regulation has led to innovation, how ideas of the scale of anthropogenic impacts on the environment have changed, and how Green Chemistry and Sustainable Chemistry relate to each other.

From a Belgian perspective it was interesting that Tom highlighted the Solvay process to produce Soda-Ash as one of the first examples of  sustainable chemistry. In 1861, Belgian industrial chemist Ernest Solvay turned his attention to the expensive and highly polluting existing process to produce this precursor to soap. Solvay's process was more economical and with its recycling of ammonia, less polluting. The Solvay's constructed a plant in Couillet, today a suburb of Charleroi, and when on to build up an immense fortune based on chemistry.

Tom argued that sustainable chemistry is vital to achieving the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and that the future for chemistry lay in 'Safe and Sustainable by Design chemicals'.

Professor Tom Welton OBE FRSC CChem FCGI is Professor of Sustainable Chemistry at Imperial College London. He served as Head of Imperial’s Department of Chemistry from 2007 to 2014 and as Dean of the Faculty of Natural Science from 2015 to 2019. He is a Fellow and the current President of the Royal Society of Chemistry and previously connected with RSC Belgium during our 2021 AGM. Tom's research focuses on sustainable chemistry, with particular focus on ionic liquids and on solvent effects on chemical reactions. 

You can relive the full webinar below or via the RSC Belgium YouTube Channel.

An Evening with Professor Sir Martyn Poliakoff

On Friday 23 February, RSC Belgium was delighted to host an informal evening with Professor Sir Martyn Poliakoff. The event took place at the British School of Brussels and was a hugely informative and entertaining soiree with one of Europe's most eminent chemists and science communicators.

Staged in a Cafe Chimique style, with refreshments available throughout the evening, Prof Poliakoff first gave a short talk on his work and career covering his research interests focused on supercritical fluids, continuous reactions and their applications to Green Chemistry.  He also talked about the Periodic Table of Videos, which he hosts.

Prof Poliakoff then answered questions from the audience for over an hour before further informal questions at the end. Our audience for the evening ranged from six to seventy and an excellent time was had by all.

During the evening we took a collection to support our Norman Lloyd Scholarships at Cardiff University and raised a further EUR 200 for the fund. Many thanks to all who contributed.

About Sir Martyn
Sir Martyn Poliakoff CBE FRS FREng studied at King's College, Cambridge, gaining his Ph.D. in 1973 on the Matrix Isolation of Large Molecules. Following time at the University of Newcastle he joined Nottingham University in 1979. He is Honorary Professor of Chemistry at Moscow State University. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society, the RSC and the IChemE and was awarded CBE in 2008 for "Services to Sciences", and knighted in 2015 for "Services to the Chemical Sciences". He was Foreign Secretary and Vice-President of the Royal Society from 2011 to 2016.

A taster for the Periodic Table of Videos is below - featuring Hydrogen.