Green chemistry partners aim to change UK culture

The latest round of Faraday Partnerships - the government-sponsored partnerships focusing industrial and academic research on technological hot-spots - includes a method to change the way industry thinks and acts.

Nothing new there, of course - such organisations always have these aims in mind. But this one, named CRYSTAL, hopes to overturn Britain's historical inability to exploit its research, and take a leading position in the field of 'green' chemical technologies.

CRYSTAL is not an acronym, it's a description. The centre is set up as a 'lattice' of organisations, each equipped to bring specific skills in research, implementation of technologies and dissemination of information. 'I hope this makes it crystal clear,' quips Malcolm Wilkinson of the IChemE, one of the centre's directors.

The goals for CRYSTAL are typically ambitious. The organisation aims to transfer new green technologies from innovations to real applications by matching industry's needs to university research programmes, stimulating new research where it's needed, increasing awareness of best practices for sustainable development, and training for culture change.

The culture change in question involves making industry aware that there is a real economic incentive to change. 'Not just greener, but cheaper and real,' is the motto. This means breaking the cycle of industry doing what it does because that's what it's always done.

The centre has been set up by a consortium of industry associations, learned societies, companies and university departments. The nucleus of CRYSTAL is formed by the Institution of Chemical Engineers, the Royal Society of Chemistry and the Chemical Industries Association, all of which are already involved in the Green Chemistry movement. The IChemE issued the London Communique, the document which committed chemical engineers to finding environmentally friendly solutions to chemical processing problems and set out a set of 'metrics' to measure progress.

The RSC spearheads the Green Chemistry Network of research centres, and the CIA has formulated a document on policy and principles behind sustainable developments.

Along with these organisations are a series of CANTOs - consortia and network technology associations - also already involved in investigating and disseminating green chemistry. These include BRITEST, the Best Route Innovation Technology Evaluation and Selection Techniques, which includes companies such as Syngenta, Dow Chemicals, GlaxoSmithKline and ICI; the Centre for Process Analytics and Control Technology at Imperial College London; the Institute of Applied Catalysis, another 'virtual centre of excellence' bringing together catalysis research centres; and the Process Intensification Network. The academic participants include 19 universities in England, Scotland and Wales.

Technology transfer is a major component of the CRYSTAL network, and according to Malcolm Wilkinson of the IChemE, one of the centre's directors, likely to be one of the most problemmatic. 'We're planning to get alongside or potential CRYSTAL participants to understand the technologies available from potential 'providers', the needs of potential 'users', and identify business opportunities and barriers,' he says. This will help the CRYSTAL coordinators draw up a 'road map' of future technology requirements and identify which organisations would be the best research partners to deliver them.

Finding people able to do this is no easy task, however; the UK has a notorious and long-running weakness at exploiting its research and turning it into wealth-generating products, and the situation hasn't improved.

'We're recruiting at the moment,' Wilkinson says. 'And if anyone knows the Angel Gabriel, perhaps they could ask him to get in touch.'

Despite this, hopes for CRYSTAL are high. According to Science minister Lord Sainsbury 'The heart of Green Chemistry is the desire to reduce resources, costs and waste, and so not only create a more environmentally friendly industry in the years ahead, but one that is more proactive in providing alternative solutions to costly and wasteful processes,' he says.