Ambitious national public-private consortium boosts research into sustainable chemical building blocks
7 March 2017
ARC-CBBC is a national consortium of scientists from Dutch universities and three industrial partners (AkzoNobel, Shell and BASF) to jointly perform top science in the area of sustainability and catalysis. Initiated by Prof. Bert Weckhuysen of Utrecht University and Nobel Prize winner Prof. Ben Feringa of Groningen University, ARC-CBBC addresses important societal challenges such as (chemical) energy storage, material-scarcity and the development of new methods to improve the energy- and atom-efficiency of industrial chemical conversions.
The research of Bas de Bruin, Joost Reek and Moniek Tromp as part of the University of Amsterdam's Research Priority Area Sustainable Chemistry is in full accordance with the ambition of ARC-CBBC. Their election as consortium members underpins both their research quality and their research focus.
In the coming decade ARC-CBBC will boost top-research in cooperation with industry along the program lines Energy carriers, Sustainable Materials & Specialties, and Coatings, with an annual budget of approximately 11 million euro. Next to applied research, fundamental science will also be a key aspect of the consortium.
During the first membership meeting held last month, the ARC-CBBC members discussed their plans and ambitions in breakout sessions. Already the first proposals for bilateral projects have been formulated, to be approved by the ARC-CBBC Scientific Advisory Board in April. In the coming months the full research programme will take shape in cooperation between the selected principal investigators and the chemical industries involved.