Sustainable Polypeptide Synthesis 

There have been many fascinating advances in peptide coupling and green solvent methods in recent years. In order to achieve successful translation of this research, more innovation is required in flow chemistry and purification methodology. One promising technology which can achieve lower solvent and reactant use, as well as have scale up potential is membrane enhanced liquid phase peptide synthesis. Several studies have improved peptide retention by increasing the overall size of the growing peptide by using a larger anchor molecule, a multi-peptide binding molecule or a nanoparticle. The overall goal of our project is to increase reaction sustainability by decreasing fresh solvent use via recycling and increasing peptide yield.

 

 

 

Upper Critical Solution Temperature and Membrane Synthesis 

Membrane synthesis involves different processes to ensure the appropriate structure and properties of the resulting film. In the past 60 years of membrane development, a lot of progress has happened in membrane synthesis approaches. The resulting membranes has since been successfully used in separation of salts, organic solvents and biomolecules. The membrane synthesis process however can lead to generation of a lot of waste from solvents used in the process to waste energy. To address this challenge, the goal of our project is to investigate the thermodynamics of different ternary green solvent-polymer systems and resulting membrane structure.

 

Sustainable Nano/Microparticles Synthesis

Many particle synthesis methods rely on toxic solvents such as dichloromethane or benzene which may be left behind as contaminants in the final particles. These solvents also carry a heavy environmental cost if they are released into the environemnt. As such, we need to keep innovating more sustainable solvents for emulsion based particle synthesis. In this project, we focused on improving sustianability of poly(ethylene glycol) particles.