Profile

I work for a guy called Martyn Poliakoff (google him! He looks just like Einstein!) Martyn has specialised in Green Chemistry for over 20 years and when I joined his team I took over some research into making plastics from biomass (or materials from plants).

Plastics are normally made from chemicals taken from oil which will run out in our lifetime so we need another way to make it. My work looks at taking fruit peel and mixing it with special kinds of bacteria to produce different carboxylic acids (chemicals with lots of carbons, hydrogen and oxygen) that I can react to make plastic. I have to run my reactions in high temperature (up to 300°C) and high pressure water (about 250 times the pressure here on Earth) so I don’t work with glassware. All of my work is done in steel pipes, called a rig, (it’s more like plumbing than classic chemistry) so I can’t actually see my reactions happening.

To check I’m making the right things, I use spectroscopy to see what the molecules look like. The molecules are too small to see by eye so we need to hit them with energy and see how much they move. Unlike most chemists, I work on a pretty big scale and am hoping to make a block of clear, colourless plastic before I finish!

I get into work for 9am and make my plan of action for the day ahead. If I’m running an experiment, I’ll turn my rig on and set the temperature and pressure I need before starting my reaction. Then I’ll check emails and update my supervisor, Martyn, on my results. At 10.30 I go for a coffee break with my work mates. At around 11 I email my industrial supervisors and let them know my plan for the week and do some reading while I wait for my reaction to finish. At 12 I take off my reactions and cool the rig down before I go for lunch and relax, catching up with friends or checking out what is going on in the world by surfing the net.

The afternoons very much depend on what day of the week it is. I work in the Undergraduate labs 2 days a week so my afternoons are spent in there helping first years run their experiments. On the other days, I work on data analysis and more reading. I’m coming to the end of my PhD now so I’m starting to write up all of my work when I can.

My days at work end at 5.30 when I go home and put my feet up!!