PhD Top Stories

The PhD Top Stories is an initiative promoted by the University of Trieste, dedicated to promoting the research results of PhD students. Each month is dedicated to a specific PhD course.

CONTRIBUTION: November 2021 was dedicated to the PhD course in Chemistry. The research of Mariachiara Spennato, PhD student in chemistry at the University of Trieste, was selected and made public both on the University’s institutional website and on social media.

“Turning biomass into functional composite materials: rice husk for fully renewable immobilized biocatalysts” is the title of the work presented by Mariachiara, which underlines how can the rice husk contributes to solving the problem of pollution from polymeric, plastic and petroleum-derived materials that have such an impact on nature. Rice husk, waste material from processing, is the second most abundant biomass globally, produced in about 120 megatonnes per year, of which only 20 are used.

This study follows the path of green chemistry, addressing the challenge of making biocatalysis more sustainable.

https://www2.units.it/dott/en/topstories/?file=item/art-2021-14-chimica.inc