Research Projects

The ongoing rise in atmospheric CO₂ levels due to industries such as powerplants, steel plants etc. having carbon positive technologies resulted in growing concern in unusual global climate change and consequent future existence of life forms in earth. This has spurred interest in not just capturing CO₂ from various downstream gaseous resources but utilizing or upcycling CO₂ to produce various valuable chemicals. Current practice is to use fossil fuel-based epoxide to convert CO2 to cyclic carbonates. Researchers and industrialists face challenges in developing cheaper and sustainable raw materials (alkene/arenes and epoxides) to capture and convert CO₂ to useful chemicals. Many renewable waste biomass such as citrus waste along with plant leaves and pods (e.g., pine) can be utilized as alternative carbon sources to develop sustainably and economically some platform/fine chemicals such as terpenes/epoxides as carbon capture/conversion agents in the chemical industry. The cycloaddition of CO₂ to epoxides offers a highly sustainable route for cyclic carbonate production, achieving complete atom economy in alignment with green chemistry/engineering principles. This research focuses on the scalable and sustainable green synthesis of terminal bio-based cyclic carbonate from bio-based terpenes (e.g, limonene, pinene etc,) extracted from citrus rinds, pine leaves etc. The study investigates the synthesis of terminate cyclic carbonate by CO₂ cycloaddition to limonene epoxide under pressurized conditions. The reaction proceeded with notable stereoselectivity employing phase transfer catalysts or ionic liquids as a homogeneous catalyst. Conversion and selectivitity close to 99% is expected with optimizing the process conditions such as epoxide concentration, pressure, temperature, catalyst loading etc. Bio-based cyclic carbonates have garnered considerable attention as potential precursor-monomer for various polymers, electrolytes in lithium ion batteries, pharmaceutical intermediates etc. The formation of cyclic carbonates via the reaction between epoxides and CO₂ is a typical example of a gas–liquid multiphase catalytic process, involving gas–liquid mass transfer and a liquid-phase cycloaddition reaction. Therefore, the adoption of an optimized reactor configuration, particularly within a continuous flow system, is proposed as a promising approach to overcome the inherent limitations of traditional batch reactors. The objective is the three-step process is to establish kinetics of extraction, epoxidation the study the kinetics of the reaction and further to optimize the reaction parameters such as temperature, pressure, catalyst type, and solvent to maximize the yield of terminal biobased cyclic carbonates. HPLC and FTIR was used to monitor the progress of the reaction and characterize the product. GCMS will be used to identify the products.