FluoroCapture

FluoroCapture is an academic research project based at University College Dublin, Ireland funded by Science Foundation Ireland National Challenge Fund. Fluorinated gas (F-gas) emissions are a small but significant contributor to global warming. Our goal is to prevent emission of fluorinated gases by showing they can be converted to valuable fluorinated chemical building blocks for use in industry, thereby promoting and incentivising their recovery and recycling. We will develop catalytic processes to upgrade these harmful chemicals in a sustainable manner so they can be used in the synthesis of pharmaceuticals, agrochemicals etc. We aim to do that by using reactive phosphorus-based catalysts to activate and functionalise F-gases with high global warming potential and explore the scale-up of these reactions to maximise output and minimise environmental impact. This project represents a convergence of both emerging and more established concepts from the fields of synthetic chemistry and chemical engineering.