Projects

This Centre of Excellence (CoE) focuses on fostering innovation in resource efficiency, promoting circular economy practices, utilizing local resources, ensuring safe material circulation, and educating researchers to reduce environmental impacts. It centers around four key areas: Strategic Mineral Resources (SMR), Carbon-Based Resources (CBR), Circular Technologies Upscaling (CTU), and Circular Business Eco-System and Modeling (CBEM). The SMR group maps critical materials in waste streams, including renewables, for extraction and reuse while minimizing hazardous waste. The CBR group develops eco-friendly pathways for essential chemicals and plastics, also assessing their environmental impact. The CTU group pioneers waste reduction and recycling methods for aqueous, and solid waste, incl. water purification. The CBEM group analyzes sustainable business ecosystems and value chains. This CoE's interdisciplinary approach will benefit both Estonia and Europe by advancing circular economy.

Sensing, capturing and separating enantiomers is important for environmental safety, agricultural chemistry, and drug design. The use of hemicucurbiturils is an effective strategy because of the combination of various monomers in a single-step templated mechanochemical synthesis. Due to the absence of bulk solvent the self-organizing efficiency is amplified and there is less waste - the process is green and sustainable. The current work will study the fundamentals of self-organization of hemicucurbiturils, the binding (capturing) of chiral molecules, and detecting chirality using supramolecular complexes. In the long term, the empirical observations will be combined with results from computational chemistry and cheminformatics to build models for predicting necessary monomers and reaction conditions to form macrocycles with desired properties. The outcomes of the project are expected to be highly useful for organizations and industries that monitor, use, or manufacture chiral compounds

As the concentrations of CO2 in the atmosphere continue to rise, methods for alleviation are desperately needed. Instead of a greenhouse gas, CO2 can also be a valuable resource, but this requires technology to split it up. Among the proposed technologies to split CO2 is its capture and electrolysis in molten salts, turning CO2 into solid carbon and gaseous oxygen. This project aims to further this technology by looking closely at the processes taking place and creating new ways of valorizing the products to create a financial incentive for scaling. Smart utilization of this powerful technology will allow us to not only directly reduce the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere, but also to limit future emissions by empowering CO2-free energy conversion devices such as fuel cells, batteries, and supercapacitors. To keep the CO2 equivalents low and to not offset the positive effect of CO2 capture and utilization, the effect of green chemistry principles and their utilization will also be studied.

The overall objective of the original CHIRALFORCE project is to demonstrate enantiomer separation in a compact, on-chip, photonic platform that is fabricated using standard silicon-based technology. This CHIRALFORCE2 hop-on project enhances the original project by providing automated in-line platform for the analysis of chiral separation for this CHIRALFORCE photonic chip. Separation of enantiomers from mixtures is essential, especially in early phase drug discovery processes when many mixtures need to be separated. CHIRALFORCE aims to revolutionize the field of chiral chemistry by introducing a radically new strategy for separating enantiomers by using chiral optical forces in silicon-based photonic integrated waveguides to separate enantiomers. The successful implementation of CHIRALFORCE project (development of separator chip) relies on fast and accurate feedback on the enantiomer separation. However, current state-of-the art technologies for checking the enantiomer separation: e.g. circular dichroism (CD) spectroscopy or High-Performance Liquid Chromatography (HPLC) lack off-the shelf capabilities for rapid in-line separation monitoring that is needed in CHIRALFORCE project. CHIRALFORCE2 addresses this need by providing a platform for in-line monitoring of the chiral separation down-stream from the CHIRALFORCE separator chip. We use interdisciplinary approach combining automation, electronics, optics and IT disciplines. The monitoring of in-line chiral separation will be achieved by CD-spectrometry or absorbance detection depending on the microfluidic and optical requirements from CHIRALFORCE project. Both scenarios are supported by designated software for the signal analysis and feedback.

The environmental impact of the pharmaceutical industry is a huge problem. The production and use of pharmaceuticals cause high CO2 emissions, contamination of soils, biota, and water, and even dangers to human health through carcinogenic impurities. Especially the use of solvents is a major problem. The European Green Deal has led to strict regulations on environmental pollution by the pharma industry, causing manufacturers to move outside of the EU due to the high costs associated with green pharma. This results in supply chain fragility and low crisis preparedness in Europe. New methods to produce pharmaceuticals in a green, efficient, and economically friendly way are required. The IMPACTIVE project brings together the expertise and knowledge from two COST Actions and will develop novel green methods to produce active pharmaceutical ingredients (APIs) using mechanochemistry as a disruptive technology (as acknowledged by IUPAC). Mechanochemistry uses mechanical processes, such as ball milling, twin-screw extrusion, resonant acoustic mixing, and spray drying, to induce chemical reactions. The advantages of mechanochemistry include: no solvent use, high efficiency, low costs, and reduced energy use and CO2 emission. Upon completion of the project, we will provide proof-of-concept at a small pilot scale of the use of mechanochemistry to produce 6 APIs from 3 different families of compounds. Based on a recent study, switching to mechanochemistry can reduce terrestrial ecotoxicity and CO2 emissions by more than 85%, while production costs were reduced with 12%. The results of the IMPACTIVE project will thus enable pharmaceutical manufacturers to move back to Europe while minimizing environmental pollution.Through our strong dissemination and communication strategy we will ensure that the project´s results are shared with scientists, the pharmaceutical industry, and stakeholders from regulatory and public authorities to achieve maximum impact.

Development of adaptable supramolecular chirality sensors is important for the industry and academia. Chiral molecules, in nform of enantiomers, are commonly used in the pharmaceutical, food, perfume, cosmetic, and agricultural industries. In biological ecosystems, chiral molecules are metabolized, absorbed, and excreted selectively, and their biological effects can vary significantly. Therefore, the environmental impact of different stereoisomers can be radically different. Standard analysis methods that do not distinguish the chirality of molecules may underestimate the effects of these compounds. In this project, we designed and synthesized new receptor molecules through both supramolecular interactions and covalent bonding. By investigating the structure, optical, and supramolecular properties of the obtained receptor molecules, we reached several new compounds with the potential to be applied for separation, isolation, and detection of bioactive compounds and environmental pollutants. We developed environmentally friendly mechanosynthesis methods to reduce waste production during the synthesis process of organic compounds. Additionally, we studied formation of oligomeric macrocyclic receptors and developed methods for obtaining both mono- and multifunctional macrocyclic compounds. We initiated research on the creation of supramolecular materials and demonstrated that materials for enantioselective electronic noses can be easily prepared using porphyrins and chiral hemicucurbiturils. We also investigated the correlation between the circulardichroism signal generation and molecular orbitals and geometries modelled by quantum chemical methods. We also showed that the signal of the studied optically active sensor molecules can be amplified via interaction with inorganic chiral materials. The results of the project were published in number of research articles and two patents were applied for.

Chiral pollution is an environmental topic of crucial importance, considering that a large number of chemicals spreading into the environment, for example pesticides, are chiral substances. However, usually the stereoisomerism of contaminants is not considered, although the biological activity of enantiomers is significantly different, making their recognition critical for environmental control. Enantiomeric excess is currently determined by off-site analysis, requiring collection, transportation, eventual pre-treating of the sample, and expensive instrumentations and specifically trained staff. Thus, providing devices able to allow for rapid on site detection and chiral discrimination of target analytes would have a dramatic impact in all the fields of environmental control with significant economic benefits. The development of chemical sensors has been conceived to bypass restrictions related to classical analytical protocols and supports the use of conventional laboratory techniques for environmental control. While the technological foundation for chemical sensors already exists, it has been difficult to apply them to chiral discrimination and analysis, due to the lack of suitable solid state receptors. The main aims of the project are: a) the development of novel molecular receptors, mainly based on porphyrin derivatives, b) integration of the receptors with different nanostructures and characterization of their solid state organization, c) deposition of the structures onto transducer surfaces, d) testing and validation of the new chemical sensor devices with enantiomeric pairs of model analytes. The synergistic complementary know-how of six academic units and two private companies will allow a breakthrough development through delivery of sensing probes ranging from the synthesis of macrocyclic molecular receptors to the building and testing of analytical and electronic parts for final, field-capable devices.