CiQUS Principal Investigator becomes the fifth CiQUS researcher funded by the European Research Council (ERC). His project 'BECAME' has been funded with two million euros to develop new technologies that allow the transformation of methane into other high added value products.
The Project BECAME, led by Martín Fañanás-Mastral, researcher at the Centro Singular de Investigación en Química Biolóxica e Materiais Moleculares (CIQUS), has just received two million euros from the European Research Council under the Consolidator Grants (ERC-CoG) 2019 call. The research to be carried out by Dr. Fañanás-Mastral focuses on the development of a new technology to transform methane, one of the most abundant raw materials on our planet, into high added value products, such as pharmaceuticals or fuels.
"Methane is the simplest hydrocarbon and the main component of natural gas. Due to the high levels of this gas in our planet –in fact, it is expected that in the coming years it will become the most abundant raw material– there is a social interest in converting this hydrocarbon into high added-value products," explains Fañanás-Mastral. Nowadays methane is mainly used as an energy source, although its use as a fuel is complicated due to its high volatility and flammability which complicates its storage and transport. In addition, burning methane generates CO2 which is a problem for global warming, although methane itself is already a greenhouse gas.
Another use of methane is the generation of syngas - a mixture of H2 and CO2 - which is a source of other hydrocarbons or methanol. However, the high energy-demanding and cost-intensive methods are required for this transformation. "For these reasons the development of alternative synthetic methodologies to transform methane into other molecules is highly necessary for our society," says the researcher.
Pharmaceutical and petrochemical industry
However, the use of methane in synthetic processes is a major challenge as this compound has a very low reactivity due to the very strong carbon-hydrogen bond that is very difficult to break. Therefore, very few examples of the use of methane in the synthesis of more complex organic molecules have been described, explains Dr. Fañanás-Mastral.
With this great challenge ahead, the project BECAME proposes a new technology that will not only activate the C-H bond of methane, but also use it as a synthetic reagent. Through the cooperative use of two metal catalysts, methane will be used for the construction of drugs, the selective modification of medicines and methodologies to transform methane into other larger hydrocarbons will be developed too, thus having a potential interest for both the pharmaceutical and petrochemical industries. The direct use of methane in the synthesis of these high added-value compounds will represent a great advance in the synthetic chemistry field, resulting in a sustainable and highly atom-efficient technology that will allow a “clean” construction of organic molecules from a very abundant raw material.
Curriculum
Martín Fañanás-Mastral (Zaragoza, 1980) performed his PhD studies at the University of Oviedo under the supervision of Prof. José Barluenga. He carried out a predoctoral stay in Professor Steven Ley's group at the University of Cambridge (United Kingdom), where he worked on the total synthesis of the natural product Bengazol A. In 2009, he joined Professor Ben Feringa's group at the University of Groningen (The Netherlands) as a post-doctoral researcher. There, he worked on the development of catalytic enantioselective allylic substitution reactions, cross-coupling reactions of organolithium compounds and oxidation reactions. In 2014, he joined the Centro Singular de Investigación en Química Biolóxica e Materiais Moleculares (CIQUS) of the USC as a Ramón y Cajal researcher. In 2015 he was awarded the 'Thieme Chemistry Journal Award', and in 2016 with the 'Young Researchers' award from the Real Sociedad Española de Química. He was also awarded the Lilly 'Young Researcher 2018' award.
His research focuses on the development of new catalytic methodologies that provide sustainable and atom-efficient transformations aimed at the enantioselective formation of C-C bonds, the activation and functionalization of alkanes, and synthesis of biologically relevant phosphorus compounds.