Congratulations for receiving the EuChemS Gold Medal. Can you tell us what does this award mean to you?
It means that our colleagues appreciate and value the work we have done for advancing the fundamentals of microporous materials and heterogeneous catalysis, as well as for transferring this fundamental knowledge to the design of advanced solid catalysts that are today used in several industrial plants around the world.
Your career as a chemist is impressive. What led you to pursue this discipline in the first place?
Chemistry has a clear creativity component where you make new molecules or better construct existing ones. Also, heterogeneous catalysis is a multidisciplinary subject with the added interest and excitement of working at the interface of inorganic, organic, physical chemistry and chemical engineering.
You are an expert on acid-base and redox catalysis, reaction mechanisms, as well as solid acid and bifunctional catalysis for energy chemicals amongst other areas. Can you tell us a bit about your research topics?
When performing a given reaction, the objective is to obtain the desired product while avoiding the formation of subproducts. This is what catalysis does, i.e., increasing the rate of the reaction with maximum selectivity towards the desired product. In our case, we attempt to design and synthesize solid catalysts with well defined uniform acid, base, or redox active sites with the adequate characteristics to catalyse the reaction. When this is achieved, we can synthesize multifunctional catalysts where you combine the above active sites to generate a catalyst that can perform multistep reactions in a “cascade” type manner. These multifunctional catalytic systems allow chemical process intensification, saving separation and purification intermediate steps and thereby increasing chemical sustainability.
Besides working to stabilise the most active and selective catalytic active sites, we also work on the solid catalysts for building cavities and pores that are able to “recognize” the reactants and reaction transition states in the reactions in order to boost activity and selectivity.
Notice that catalysis applies to any type of chemical reaction, and it is key in the energy field, as well as for the production of chemicals regardless whether the starting molecules are fossil hydrocarbons, biomass or CO2 derived products.
As you can see, catalysis is a key discipline for green chemistry to achieve a more sustainable world.
As an owner of more than 180 patents, and recipient of the European Inventor Award for Lifetime Achievement from the European Patent Office, can you tell us a bit about your work as an inventor?
Our patents always come from previous works on the fundamentals. We ask ourselves questions and try to answer them. In the research process we attempt to understand how reactions occur at the molecular level and what type of catalysts can influence such reactions. Sometimes we are successful in our objective and sometimes we see that our findings can have practical implications. When this occurs, we apply for a patent before publishing the results. So far we have been lucky that an important number of such patents have been of interest for various companies and they have further developed them to industrial application. I can tell you that it is extremely exciting when we probe our starting hypothesis. It is also very exciting when you publish your scientific results and get the feedback from your colleagues, but it is extremely rewarding when you see an industrial plant producing chemicals on the bases of what you conceived and did in the laboratory.
You are one of the founding members of the Instituto de Tecnología Química (Institute of Chemical Technology). Can you share some insights about the foundation of this prestigious research centre?
The ITQ is a research centre of the CSIC and Polytechnical University of Valencia. We started the ITQ in 1990, in a parking spot at the Polytechnical University with very low human and economic resources. We were seven scientists and about 10 students led by Prof. Jaime Primo. We could not rely on public research money from the Spanish government agency since it was very low at that time. However, we were highly committed with the adventure of ITQ, and I was visiting research centres of European and American companies giving talks and offering ideas to develop together. I was very lucky with the commitment, and with several companies believing in us when we had nothing to offer apart from original ideas and a way to do things differently. We established an administration system for the ITQ where all the incomes were transferred into a single account from which all the equipment, salaries, consumables etc, were paid. The money coming from patent licencing and from royalties went into that account and was donated by the author of the patents. It was on the basis of solidarity, very hard work, common objectives and a clear direction on how to overcome “Death Valley” and finally achieve a research institute that is a centre of excellence: Severo Ochoa in Spain. As you see, the origin and development of ITQ has nothing to do with the Institutes which were created later with extraordinary funding and the possibilities to hire the best scientists from any place. On the contrary, we had to do it with the limited human resources and funding we had. That is why I am so thankful for and proud of all the colleagues and companies, also CSIC and UPV that believed on us during difficult times.
What would you consider your greatest achievement – what are you most proud of?
What I am most proud of is on one hand the creation of ITQ that started with few people and they are today close to 350, and it is giving the opportunity to do high quality research to many young researchers in Spain. On the other hand I am very happy to see that my way of seeing and carrying out the research (that I summarized in an editorial in Angewandte chemie Int-Ed- 55, 6112 (2016) “Heterogeneous Catalysis: Understanding for Designing, and Designing for Applications”) i.e. advancing the fundamentals and transferring the knowledge to industry, it is now in the DNA of the new generations formed in the ITQ. Of course, I am very happy to see that the discoveries I made in the lab are today helping to improve the life of people.
And what challenges did you have to face as a chemist?
As a chemist, I am working in molecular recognition by solid materials catalysts. In some way I wanted to approach the catalysis with solids to the catalytic behaviour of enzymes, i.e., well defined and homogeneous active sites, and molecular recognition. I know it is not a simple task since the “flexibility” is not the same in the structure of solids as it is in enzymes. Nevertheless, we try to compensate this by other means and to play with the enthalpy and entropy of activation, the interaction of the transition states of the reactions, the solid catalysts, and with pre-designed confined spaces.
Do you have advice for younger chemists and/or students of chemistry?
I would tell them that chemistry is a very creative science. We are committed to a sustainable chemistry in a sustainable world, that means solving problems and creating new molecules and products without generating environmental problems.
Those interested in research should pursue their adventure. Research is a creative job where each day, you face a new adventure. You will see that very few things can be compared to the intellectual satisfaction you get when, after hard work, you prove your scientific hypothesis to be true. Furthermore, they will contribute to the general knowledge and help to improve the life of humankind.
As we are nearing the end of this interview, do you have any messages to our readers?
Our civilization would not have achieved its current developmental state without chemistry. Today, chemistry is also a transversal discipline, strongly required by the bio and material sciences (among others).
We should give our strong support to good chemistry and to the people who work and make the advances in our discipline.