MUTATION

The well-established problematic of global warming, combined with the reduction of fossil fuels, urges the need for the development of disruptive conversion technologies to completely replace the use of fossil fuels in the transport and energy sectors with advanced biofuels and alternative renewable fuels. As for fossil fuels, catalysts will represent one of the key components of successful biorefineries. Developing new catalytic processes that are less expensive, less energy consuming or able to use alternative energies as power sources, and that are more flexible in terms of feedstocks and types of fuels produced, therefore remains one of the most important challenges of tomorrow. Numerous European projects already target the generation of biofuel from several biomass sources using different types of catalysts. However, they are only focusing the development of a specific type of catalysts at the same time whether it concerns chemocatalysis in the FastCARD (“Catalysts for better biofuel production”) project for example, or biocatalysis in WASTE2FUELS (“Sustainable production of next generation biofuels from waste streams”). With MUTATION we propose to shift from a single workflow-based process to a new flexible pipelines concept, that will benefit from the combination of all types of catalysis, for a more global and efficient valorization of multiple biomass sources. Using the strong expertise developed for years by both the Japanese and European members of the nascent MUTATION consortium, this project will considerably strengthen the knowledge in all types of catalytic processes, from heterogeneous chemocatalysis, to biocatalysis, through electro-, photo-, and even plasmonic catalysis. Ultimately, we will introduce and develop the new concept of hybrid catalysis into the field of renewable fuels production. By combining under a tandem simultaneous reaction process multiple type of catalysts, this scientific concept symbolizes perfectly what we are willing to achieve with MUTATION: a synergistic combination of knowledge from Japanese and European partners ending up to the conception of an interlocked network of cooperating catalysts for a more sustainable conversion of biomass into biofuels. With this goal in mind, the major challenge for MUTATION will evidently be the successful cooperation of both these catalysts and researchers coming from Europe and Japan, challenge that we are starting overcome right now with the creation of our project consortium in order to answer to the H2020 call (LC-SC3-RES-25-2020) that promotes “international cooperation for research and innovation with Japan on advanced biofuels and alternative renewable fuels”.