Congratulations to Dr. Bas Terlingen for an excellent PhD defense! Bas has successfully defended his PhD thesis, supervised by Prof. Bert Weckhuysen.

He developed catalysts for the methane oxychloriniation reaction & used operando Raman spectroscopy.

The re-use of the by-product hydrochloric acid to generate valuable compounds

The manufacturing of thermoplastics, such as polyurethanes, generates large amounts of hydrogen chloride as by-product, which can be turned into chlorine salts or purged into the sea. In view of environmental considerations and the recent construction of new polyurethanes production units it becomes crucial to find solutions to close the chlorine balance. As a result, it is important to find viable options to re-use hydrogen chloride in a process, which produces an important chlorine-containing bulk chemical. In order to realize this ambition, we aim to develop a novel, selective and stable catalytic solid, which enable the activation of methane with the aid of hydrogen chloride and oxygen with the goal to selectively produce carbon tetrachloride. Next to the search for a viable and stable catalyst composition, we will design a lab-scale reactor to properly conduct this process and define the reaction conditions to tune the selectivity of this chlorination process.