Supervisors: Prof Klaus Hellgardt (Imperial College London), Dr Christian Holtze (BASF), Dr Sven Titlbach (BASF)

Home Department: Department of Chemical Engineering at Imperial College London (South Kensington Campus)

Funding and Deadline: To be eligible for support, applicants must be “UK Residents” as defined by the EPSRC. The studentship is for 4 years starting as soon as possible and will provide full coverage of standard tuition fees and an annual tax-free stipend of approximately £20,622. Applicants should hold or expect to obtain a First-Class Honours or a high 2:1 degree at Master’s level (or equivalent) in any relevant chemistry or science subject. Funding is co-funded through Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) and BASF. 

Project summary

The Industry Case (I-Case) PhD student will join an interdisciplinary cohort of students working under the umbrella of the IConIC Prosperity Partnership An internship of min. 3 months will be facilitated and sponsored by BASF for the utilization of specific infrastructure and technology transfer.

Ammonia synthesis has been the main industrial nitrogen fixation process for almost a century. Improvements to catalysts involved have become marginal. The carbon footprint of ammonia synthesis is significant and contributes significantly to global CO2 emissions. Significant efforts to make ammonia synthesis more sustainable are underway. Less emphasis has been put on the search for alternative nitrogen activation processes (plasma or electrochemical) and nitrogen containing building blocks to displace ammonia in the nitrogen value chain. From an atom and redox economic point of view the most interesting nitrogen containing activated molecule would be HCN (hydrogen cyanide). Industrially the synthesis of HCN involves the reaction of methane, ammonia and oxygen at very high temperatures over heterogeneous platinum catalysts. Since both, ammonia and HCN synthesis require heterogeneous catalysts, albeit under different conditions, it is conceivable that catalysts and conditions could be found to directly convert hydrocarbons and nitrogen to HCN under industrially relevant conditions.

Key questions to be addressed during the PhD will be:

• Can a catalytic system be designed that facilitates the synthesis of HCN from acetylene and nitrogen directly (most atom economic fixation)?
• Can the use of different, industrially accessible carbon sources like methane facilitate an overall attractive process for the synthesis of HCN?
• Can we simultaneously activate nitrogen and C-H or C-C bonds under industrially relevant conditions?
• Can the conditions under which above activation typically occurs (e.g. Andrussow process >1000 °C) be reduced through workfunction modification achieved via DC application to semiconductor support materials? – there is prior evidence for this in the case of the reverse water gas shift reaction.
• Can a catalytic or chemical looping process be designed based on reliable rate data to yield an economically feasible outcome?

To apply, please complete an application form Application process | Study | Imperial College London.   Informal enquiries about the post and the application process can be made to Bhavna Patel (iconic-pp@imperial.ac.uk)

Supervisors: Prof King Kuok (Mimi) Hii (Imperial College London), Dr Christian Holtze (BASF), Dr Philipp Staehle (BASF)

Home Department: Department of Chemistry at Imperial College London (White City Campus)

Funding and Deadline: To be eligible for support, applicants must be “UK Residents” as defined by the EPSRC. The studentship is for 4 years starting as soon as possible and will provide full coverage of standard tuition fees and an annual tax-free stipend of approximately £20,622. Applicants should hold or expect to obtain a First-Class Honours or a high 2:1 degree at Master’s level (or equivalent) in any relevant chemistry or science subject. Funding is co-funded through Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) and BASF.

 Project summary

The Industry Case (I-Case) PhD student will join an interdisciplinary cohort of students working under the umbrella of the IConIC Prosperity Partnership An internship of min. 3 months will be facilitated and sponsored by BASF for the utilization of specific infrastructure and technology transfer.

Enantioselective synthesis remains to be a major challenge in classical organic synthesis both technically and economically. In collaboration between BASF and Imperial College London we have developed a novel processing concept that combines an an immobilized enzymatic transformation with flash thermal racemization for the racemization of chiral amines, i. e. a dynamic kinetic resolution approach. It can be applied to amines and stereoinversion reactions.[1] At the heart of the technology is the development of a flow module that can realize rapid racemization of the amine with high selectivity, afforded by residence time control, increasing the productivity of the process by several orders of magnitude. In this proposed follow-on work, we will extend the concept to the synthesis of other optically active compounds that are essential to the fine chemicals and pharmaceutical industries and demonstrate scalability in a lab setup. [1] M. J. Takle, B. J. Deadman, K. Hellgardt, J. Dickhaut, A. Weija, K. K. Hii, ACS Catal. 2023, 13, 10541-6. DOI: 10.1021/acscatal.3c02859.

Key questions to be addressed during the PhD will be:

• Establishing an integrated process that couples transition metal catalysis with biocatalysis in flow, using spatial and residence time control to achieve kinetically compatible systems to maximise productivity.
• Expanding the concept to a range of different chemical transformations. This may entail the integration of an enantiomer separation step into the processing concept.
• Preparing the opposite enantiomer/epimer of natural materials through stereocentre inversion, including unnatural (D-)amino acids.
• Scaling up the process to yield relevant demonstrator samples and prove the applicability of the methodology for commercial purposes.

To apply, please complete an application form Application process | Study | Imperial College London.   Informal enquiries about the post and the application process can be made to Bhavna Patel (iconic-pp@imperial.ac.uk)