Ander Centeno-Pedrazo

• PostDoc Position at Queen's University Belfast

Current global challenges associated with energy security and climate emergency, caused by the combustion of fossil fuels (e.g., jet fuel and diesel), necessitate the accelerated development and deployment of sustainable fuels derived from renewable biomass-based chemical feedstocks. This study focuses on the production of long-chain (straight and...

The selective hydrogenation of CO2 for the production of net-zero fuels and essential chemical building blocks is a promising approach to combat climate change. Key to this endeavor is the development of catalysts with high activity and selectivity for desired hydrocarbon products in the C2–C5 range. The process involves a two-step reaction, starti...

Carbon dioxide is ideal for carboxylation reactions as a renewable and sustainable C1 feedstock and has significant recognition owing to its low cost, non-toxicity, and high abundance. To depreciate the environmental concentration of CO2, which causes the greenhouse gas effect, developing new catalytic protocols for organic synthesis in CO2 utiliza...

Carbon-carbon coupling reactions are of great interest for a wide range of applications including pharmaceutical compounds and biologically active molecules. Usually, coupling reactions were performed using a homogeneous catalyst and organic solvent. Thus, the use of greener solvents as well as the heterogenization of the classical metal-based cata...

A series of phosphonium-based ionic liquids have been prepared in one step in a simple way from inexpensive feedstocks. The prepared ionic liquids have been successfully tested as catalysts in the solvent-free cycloaddition reaction of CO2 to an epoxidized soybean oil to obtain carbonated soybean oil that can be potentially employed as bio-monomer...

Six lignin‐based polyols (LBPs) have been prepared by cationic ring opening polymerization of an oxirane in the presence of an organosolv lignin in tetrahydrofuran (THF) as reaction media and co‐monomer. The prepared LBPs have been characterized and tested for the first time as phase change materials (PCMs) for thermal energy storage (TES) at low t...

Isosorbide is a biobased compound which could become in the near future an advantageous competitor of petroleum-derived components in the synthesis of polymers of different nature. When the reactivity of isosorbide is not enough, it can be successfully transformed into secondary building blocks, such as isosorbide bis(methyl carbonate), which provi...

Lignin-based polyols (LBPs) with controlled microstructure were obtained by cationic ring opening polymerization (CROP) of oxiranes in an organosolv lignin (OL) tetrahydrofuran (THF) solution. The control on the microstructure and consequently on the properties of the LBPs such as hydroxyl number, average molecular weight, melting, crystallization...

A family of lignin-based polyols (LBPs) has been prepared and characterized using a novel and unprecedented synthetic approach consisting of a cationic ring opening polymerization reaction of oxiranes in the presence of tetrahydrofuran as both the solvent and co-monomer and an organosolv lignin (OL) at atmospheric pressure and room temperature in a...