Green Chemistry @ MUN


Congratulations to Marcus, Khaled and Jen!
March 29, 2012, 2:43 pm
Filed under: Group News, Science, Students | Tags: , , ,

Their manuscript has just been accepted for publication in RSC Advances. (This is a new interdisciplinary journal of the Royal Society of Chemistry)

RSC Adv., DOI:10.1039/C2RA20578E

Khaled is a PhD candidate in the MUN Green Chemistry & Catalysis Group. Marcus obtained his results during an NSERC USRA in the group during summer 2011 and Jen held a SWASP position in the group at the same time.



Congratulations Justin!

HSAB Periodic Table of Cupcakes!

Justin Bélanger (M.Sc. candidate, Kozak group) received a prize for 2nd place in the graduate student poster competition at the recent Atlantic Inorganic Discussion Weekend (AIDW) held in Charlottetown, PEI. Well done Justin for representing the MUN Green Chem. & Catalysis Group!



Iron Talk on the Road – Leeds
March 28, 2012, 4:35 pm
Filed under: Conferences, Group News, Science | Tags: , , ,
Leeds at Night (by Andrew Roberts, UK)

Leeds at Night (by Andrew Roberts, UK)

Chris Kozak visited the School of Chemistry at the University of Leeds last week. He gave a departmental seminar on iron catalyzed reactions being studied by his students at Memorial University. Iron is popular metal to use in metal-catalyzed reactions for organic synthesis because it is cheap and non-toxic.



Article in “The Scope” features the Green Chemistry and Catalysis Group

The St. John’s arts and entertainment magazine, “The Scope”, recently published an article in their on-line edition on some of the work occurring in the MUN Green Chemistry and Catalysis Group. Entitled “Great future in green plastics“, the article by Dave Jerome describes the research on degradable plastics that is being performed by Justin Belanger and other students in the group.Image



Honours thesis presentations
March 17, 2012, 10:51 am
Filed under: Group News, Science, Students | Tags: , ,

Good luck to Lisa, Marcus and Michelle with their presentations today!

Lisa N. Saunders (C. Kozak) “Synthesis and Reactivity of Amine-bis(phenolate) Complexes of Germanium and Tin”

Michelle E. Pratt (C. Kozak) “The Synthesis and Reactivity of Amine-bis(phenolate) Calcium and Magnesium Complexes”

Marcus W. Drover (F. Kerton) “From Bismuth(III) Boats to Lithium Ladders and Beyond: The Structural, Catalytic and Spectroscopic Features of Main-Group Clusters”

Image

VT NMR of Li complex



Chitosan as a biorefinery feedstock

The first paper from Khaled’s PhD research has been accepted for publication by Green Chemistry.

It is called “Hydrolysis of Chitosan Into Levulinic Acid and 5-Hydroxymethylfurfural In Water Under Microwave Irradiation”

It describes our first efforts at converting biopolymers that can be obtained from fishery waste into potentially useful small molecules. This proof of concept will hopefully lead to these natural materials being used alongside agricultural and forestry wastes as the starting point for chemicals with a wide range of purposes including, fuels, agrochemicals, pharmaceuticals and plastics.

Some of the results were obtained in collaboration with Jessica Besaw (NSERC USRA 2010, Kerton group) who Khaled acted as mentor to.  Congratulations Khaled and Jess!

Aminopolysaccharides (Chitin) are available in the shells of crustaceans (lobsters, crabs, shrimps). Khaled has shown that valuable 'Platform' chemicals can be made from them

Green Chem., DOI:10.1039/C2GC35048C



Kerton & Kozak visit York while on Sabbatical
March 9, 2012, 5:12 pm
Filed under: Conferences, Group News

Chris and Fran were invited to participate in a departmental symposium and be the supporting act for Dr. Stephen Liddle (Nottingham University) who was giving his Royal Society of Chemistry Sir Edward Frankland Fellowship Award Lecture. Fran spoke about “Catalysis and Nanoparticle Formation Using Ionic Liquids” and Chris spoke about “Iron Complexes for C-C Cross-coupling Reactions”

They took the opportunity to do some sightseeing…..if you look carefully you might spot a photo of Fran giving her lecture!



Faculty of Science News Feature
February 21, 2012, 8:46 pm
Filed under: Group News

Chris was featured on the Faculty of Science news page for his Terra Nova Young Innovator Award. It is linked here.



MUN – UPEI collaboration
February 16, 2012, 2:44 pm
Filed under: Group News, Science

Further to work being patented by their respective Universities and GreenCentre Canada, results on controlled radical polymerization using iron amine-phenolate complexes has been accepted for publication in Macromolecular Rapid Communications, DOI: 10.1002/marc.201100872  Congratulations to the Kozak (MUN) and Shaver (UPEI) groups.



News from Dr. Kerton’s first PhD student
February 3, 2012, 9:16 am
Filed under: Group News, Science

Charlotte Willans (PhD with Dr. Kerton, 2004) has obtained exciting results in the field of chemotherapy. Her work on silver carbene complexes has been published in Dalton Transactions. It has been featured in the UK Newspaper “The Daily Mail” and she was interviewed on Radio 4 (National UK radio) this morning. Congratulations Charlotte!