Innovate and React

In this episode of Innovate and React, I welcome my former PhD mentor, Dr. Thomas Seidensticker from TU Dortmund, to explore how oleochemistry can provide a sustainable, locally grown alternative to crude oil for the chemical industry. While the traditional chemical sector relies heavily on cheap fossil fuels, plant oils naturally offer closely related hydrocarbon chains that can be functionalized for everyday products like surfactants, cosmetics, and polymers. However, shifting away from crude oil presents the unique challenge of dealing with complex, inhomogeneous fatty acid profiles that constantly vary by plant origin and season. We discuss the strategic importance of feedstock sovereignty and how diverting plant oils from low-value biodiesel combustion into long-lasting chemical products can create vital carbon sinks to help meet future renewable carbon targets.
How do you transform these varied plant oils into the standardized building blocks the conventional industry demands? Thomas explains the breakthrough potential of utilizing the unsaturated carbon-carbon double bonds in plant oils, highlighting technologies like cross-metathesis and his own university spinoff, Simplyfined. We also dive into the historical 1938 roots of homogeneous catalysis, the logistical hurdles of scaling pilot volumes, and why agile startups are essential for taking the disruptive technological risks that large, slow-moving chemical corporations currently avoid.

In this episode of Innovate and React, I welcome Dr. Ronja Rappold, co-founder of TENO Bioworks, to explore how microorganisms and synthetic biology can transform alternative carbon sources into high-value chemicals. While biological manufacturing is well known for producing life-saving pharmaceuticals like insulin or traditional fermented goods, shifting base and fine chemical production away from fossil fuels presents a unique challenge. Relying solely on agricultural sugars introduces significant "food vs. fuel" conflicts and risks breaching critical planetary boundaries, including land use, freshwater consumption, and nutrient cycles. Ronja and her team address this by targeting C1 feedstocks—specifically green methanol derived from captured CO₂.
How do you teach an industrial workhorse to live on a completely foreign feedstock? Ronja explains TENO Bioworks' approach to performing a metabolic "heart transplant" on Escherichia coli (E. coli). They successfully rewired E. coli to utilize methanol as its primary carbon and energy source. We also dive into the downstream engineering required to produce target chemicals like lactic acid, the advantages of using raw, unpurified methanol over traditional metal catalysts.

In this episode of Innovate and React, I welcome back Thomas Bouveyron from and TH Köln to explore how we can make conventional petrochemical pathways more sustainable. We look into the synthesis of n-decanal, which is a crucial molecule in the fragrance industry and a key scent in Chanel No. 5. Thomas' gaol is to shift from crude oil- to bio-based building blocks. How do you bend the rules of classical Wacker oxidation to favor the usually unfavored anti-Markovnikov product? Thomas shares his methodology, combining statistical Design of Experiments (DOE) and computational Density Functional Theory (DFT) calculations to unravel more of the catalytic mechanism. We also discuss the practical engineering hurdles of catalyst fatigue, solvent participation, and the tricky business of separating decanal from decanone.

In this episode of Innovate and React, I met with Miriam Hesse and Bastian Kaufmann, researchers at the Hydrogen and Fuel Cell Center (ZBT) to discuss the rising potential of Anion Exchange Membrane (AEM) water electrolysis. We explore how AEM serves as the perfect compromise between traditional alkaline systems and proton exchange membrane (PEM) electrolysis, offering high efficiency without the reliance on expensive precious metals like platinum and iridium. Miriam and Bastian share their journey into hydrogen research and how ZBT acts as a crucial bridge between fundamental chemistry and applied industrial engineering across the entire hydrogen value chain.

The conversation dives deep into the specific challenges and innovations within AEM technology, from navigating the historical bottlenecks of polymer membrane stability to the intricate process of fabricating homogeneous catalyst layers directly onto porous transport layers (PTLs). We discuss the promising use of nickel-based catalysts to optimize the oxygen and hydrogen evolution reactions. Furthermore, we examine the complexities of scaling this technology for industry, emphasizing the need for long-term degradation data, accelerated stress tests, and advanced analytical methods like electrochemical impedance spectroscopy (EIS) and the distribution of relaxation times (DRT) to pinpoint exactly where performance losses occur in real-world systems.

In this episode of Innovate and React, I met with Dr. Rhea Machado, the CEO and co-founder of Porelio, to discuss their solution for removing forever chemicals from our drinking water. We explore the widespread issue of PFAS accumulating in our water, our food, and even unborn children, and how short-chain PFAS remain a massive challenge because traditional methods like activated carbon and ion exchange resins fail to capture them. Rhea shares Porelio's journey as a spinoff from the Technical University Berlin, where they took highly efficient but traditionally hard-to-produce functionalized ordered meso-porous silica and successfully scaled it for industrial use.

The conversation dives deep into Porelio's innovative approach, which uses an ordered pore structure equipped with engineered functional groups to quickly and selectively catch specific target molecules, whether that is toxic PFAS in industrial wastewater or valuable precious metals. We discuss the multifaceted challenges of scaling a B2B chemistry startup, from defining unit economics to simultaneously scaling production and navigating regulatory pathways like REACH, all while trying to find innovative R&D partners in a conservative industry.