E Balaraman
IISER, Tirupati
E Balaraman is an Associate Professor and Chair at the Department of Chemistry, II SER, Tirupati. He holds a PhD (2002-2008) from the University of Hyderabad. His group's research primarily focuses on generating resources for green energy and recycling atmospheric waste. Specifically, his research group works on designing and developing catalytic materials for hydrogen generation from feedstock chemicals, sustainable chemical synthesis, and conversion of CO2 to value-added chemicals. He is also interested in developing new electron donors for Ziegler-Natta olefin polymerization catalysis.
Session 1B - Symposium on "Catalysis for a sustainable society"
Non-noble metal catalysis for sustainable development
Energy storage and the use of abundantly available feedstock without contributing to the carbon footprint are the two main challenges in sustainable development. In this regard, meeting the energy demand of society while avoiding environmental pollution requires the development of high-performance, low-cost, eco-benign, sustainable, and affordable catalytic systems. Design of catalysts for various important reactions using organometallic, nano-, and photo(redox) catalysis approaches for fundamental and applied research is the focus of our research group at IISER, Tirupati. Developing catalysts/catalytic materials based on non-precious metals that can enable sustainable and affordable chemical synthesis from feedstocks via dehydrogenation chemistry, hydrogen production from renewable sources, and CO2 utilization for circular catalysis is our aim. The synthesis of electron donors for the Ziegler-Natta olefin polymerization catalysis is also being explored by our group. Our odyssey with dehydrogenation chemistry for sustainable and affordable chemical synthesis will be discussed briefly in this talk.