Professorship for Sustainable Chemistry of Renewable Organic Resources
Organisational unit: Professoship
Organisation profile
The Professorship of Sustainable Chemistry of Renewable Organic Resources at the Institute of Sustainable Chemistry at Leuphana University Lüneburg focuses on research involving bio-based materials and related products, their flows and processes, attempting to understand and incorporate the most recent advances also from other fields, including options that do not involve chemical processes when they can potentially offer a more sustainable alternative to current products, procedures and services.
Emphasis is given to the sustainable food systems framework, based on critical thinking to generate more resilient, regenerative, and healthier structures. In this context, the research lines cover the design, development, and application of sustainable separation, especially extraction, to obtain and/or determine bioactive and other high-value compounds, from lab to larger scales, aiming at the production, distribution, consumption and management of biomass and / or agro-industrial chain “wastes”, considering the UN sustainable development goals.
Main research areas
As well-known, there is an urgent need for optimised and renewable organic resource use for greener and more sustainable production and processing systems worldwide. Many of the current food, beverage, nutraceutical, plant product and raw material production technologies for these sectors are responsible for various socio and environmental problems, encompassing soil and water impact, contamination at several levels and even generating an excess of biomass or other products which are called “waste“, a material culturally considered wrong in place and time.
To face such challenges and produce more inclusive, accessible and fairer, healthier food for everyone around the globe, new approaches focusing on sustainable agriculture, bioindustries and biorefineries have emerged, such as those created and developed by our research group based in Lüneburg, Germany, involving research lines such as:
- Foundation and application of Green and Sustainable Chemistry (taking into account circular economy and bioeconomy), focusing on Analytical Chemistry.
- Sustainable Separation (sample preparation, determination of compounds of interest, as well as traditional and alternative processes on different scales).
- Design, development and application of greener and more sustainable analytical methods.
- Extraction and transformation of bioactive compounds obtained from biomass.
- Determination of endogenous and exogenous compounds in complex matrices (e.g., food and environmental ones, packaging, toys).
- Case studies considering integrated aspects of the Sustainable Food and related Systems framework.
- And any other very good idea that emerges…
Regarding our teaching and outreach activities, we encompass the key elements designed and applied at Leuphana, where the sense of contemporary education crosses the boundaries of a purely subject-specific course of study, combining specific knowledge with interdisciplinary skills, qualifying our students for constantly changing demands in the world in realistic and positive ways. In doing so, topics related to green and sustainable chemistry focusing on renewable compounds are presented and discussed in our lectures, seminars laboratory sessions, and supplemented by additional exercises.
- 2023
- Published
Genetic editing of wood for sustainability: Trees engineered to have less lignin could make paper production less polluting
Zuin Zeidler, V. G., 14.07.2023, In: Science. 381, 6654, p. 124-125 2 p.Research output: Journal contributions › Comments / Debate / Reports › Research
- Published
Formative Dimensions for Green and Sustainable Chemical Education: A Qualitative Evaluation Tool of the Formative Level of Experimental Processes
Andrade, R. S. & Zuin, V. G., 13.06.2023, In: Journal of Chemical Education. 100, 6, p. 2281-2291 11 p.Research output: Journal contributions › Journal articles › Research › peer-review
- 2022
- Published
Reflections on educational leadership for sustainability: a Brazilian case study
Sudan, D. C. & Zuin, V. G., 12.2022, In: Discover Sustainability. 3, 1, 13 p., 4.Research output: Journal contributions › Journal articles › Research › peer-review
- Published
Dimensions of digital transformation in the context of modern agriculture
Mendes, J. A. J., Carvalho, N. G. P., Mourarias, M. N., Careta, C. B., Vânia Gomes Zuin, G. Z. & Gerolamo, M. C., 01.11.2022, In: Sustainable Production and Consumption. 34, p. 613-637 25 p.Research output: Journal contributions › Journal articles › Research › peer-review
- Published
Green and Sustainable Extraction of Proteins from Agro-industrial Waste: An Overview and a Closer Look to Latin America
Segatto, M. L., Stahl, A. M., Zanotti, K. & Zuin, V. G., 01.10.2022, In: Current Opinion in Green and Sustainable Chemistry. 37, 100661.Research output: Journal contributions › Scientific review articles › Research
- Published
Ionic liquids vs. ethanol as extraction media of algicidal compounds from mango processing waste
Segatto, M. L., Schnarr, L., Olsson, O., Kümmerer, K. & Zuin, V. G., 16.09.2022, In: Frontiers in Chemistry. 10, 13 p., 986987.Research output: Journal contributions › Journal articles › Research › peer-review
- Published
Repurposing chemical waste: Sustainable chemistry for circularity beyond artificial intelligence
Zuin, V. G. & Kümmerer, K., 21.07.2022, In: Cell. 185, 15, p. 2655-2656 2 p.Research output: Journal contributions › Comments / Debate / Reports › Research
- Published
Flavonoids as biopesticides – Systematic assessment of sources, structures, activities and environmental fate
Schnarr, L., Segatto, M. L., Olsson, O., Zuin, V. G. & Kümmerer, K., 10.06.2022, In: Science of the Total Environment. 824, 153781.Research output: Journal contributions › Scientific review articles › Research
- Published
Green and Sustainable Extraction of High-Value Compounds: Protein from Food Supply Chain Waste
Zanotti, K., Stahl, A. M., Segatto, M. L. & Zuin, V. G., 29.03.2022, Sustainable Separation Engineering: Materials, Techniques and Process Development. Szekely, G. & Zhao, D. (eds.). Wiley-VCH Verlag, p. 63-104 42 p.Research output: Contributions to collected editions/works › Chapter › peer-review
- Published
The ten principles of green sample preparation
López-Lorente, Á. I., Pena-Pereira, F., Pedersen-Bjergaard, S., Zuin, V. G., Ozkan, S. A. & Psillakis, E., 01.03.2022, In: TrAC - Trends in Analytical Chemistry. 148, 10 p., 116530.Research output: Journal contributions › Scientific review articles › Research