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About us

Great British Chemicals is a National Research & Innovation Centre for Sustainable Industrial Futures. Funded by EPSRC and NERC, the centre will unite the UK chemical industry, academic researchers and policy makers to advance innovative, scalable and sustainable technology solutions for defossilising chemicals manufacturing. We aim to create people-focussed opportunities to truly shape sustainable carbon management.

Our collaborative streams

Our centre will consider the whole system, from resource collection through to the end of life for the chemicals and products produced. This is a large scope with a team of world-leading research institutions and individuals working towards a common goal. Our work is divided broadly across 4 major collaborative streams.

Moonshot

Digitally accelerating innovation cycles of emerging technology

Catalysis will be critical in transforming the UK chemicals industry to employ a sustainable, diverse, and dynamic range of non-fossil carbon feedstocks. Moving away from the current fossil-petrochemical sectors requires new catalytic pathways to be established and evaluated, and existing processes re-optimised to cope with impurity and variation in circular feedstocks. To deliver a prosperous transition to net-zero and maximise its opportunities, significant technical, scientific, and economic barriers must be addressed.

Our highly ambitious “Moonshot” will focus on transforming “Waste to X”. The availability of future feedstocks will be dynamic: there is no single feedstock as a “drop-in” alternative. Our target mix consists of CO₂, biomass and waste polymers, yet this will evolve as technologies evolve across sectors.

The Work Streams

Scaling technologies (CCU and process intensification)

Our Work Streams are demonstration projects at mid-TRL level, following waste hierarchy principles: prevention, reuse and recycling. Click the links below to learn more

WS1 Carbon Capture: purified CO₂ from real flue gas

WS2: CO₂ Us e

WS3: CO₂ Utilisation

The Function Streams

Validating Sustainability

Cross-cutting Function Streams will focus on

1. Horizon scanning for FlexFund interventions;

2. Development and implementation of assessment tools;

3. Upskilling the workforce to adapt to new processes and standards; developing and supporting Entrepreneurship through mentoring and education to identify potential start-up companies.

Together, this will ensure that UK PLC is ready for the transition to Net Zero, greater Resource Efficiency, and compliance with current and evolving legislation. These technology-agnostic streams take a whole systems approach and are centred around three pillars, underpinning all the work of Great British Chemicals.

View more about our Function Streams

The FlexFund

For agile innovation

Collaborative research across multiple sectors will be the key to our success. We will invite collaborative research and innovation projects focussing on accelerating the scale-up and deployment of novel and existing technologies. The calls will be open to UK academics with the aim of promoting partnerships between academia, industry, the public sector and non-profit organisations.

Please see our dedicated FlexFund page for further information and notice of current and upcoming funding calls.

Apply for funding

Our FlexFund is used to strategically advance a continuous pipeline of scalable innovations with commercial potential that unlock value from waste resources. We will support co-creation and co-delivery with wider stakeholders from the full suite of foundation industries, encourage entrepreneurship (see People theme) and drive impact outcomes.

Learn more