Chem4Energy: a consortium of the Royal Society Africa Capacity-Building Initiative

Abstract

The Africa Capacity-Building Initiative is a Royal Society programme funded by the former UK Department for International Development to develop collaborative research between scientists in sub-Saharan Africa and the UK. Initially, four institutions were involved in the Chem4Energy consortium: Cardiff University in the UK and three African partners, the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology, Ghana, the University of Namibia and the University of Botswana, soon also including the Botswana International University of Science and Technology. The Chem4Energy research programme focused on 'New materials for a sustainable energy future: linking computation with experiment', aiming to deploy the synergy between state-of-the-art computational and experimental techniques to design and optimize new catalysts and semiconductor materials for renewable energy applications, based on materials that are abundant and readily available in African countries. The Chem4Energy consortium has achieved ambitious research goals, graduated seven PhD students and delivered a high-quality cross-disciplinary training programme in materials science and simulation techniques relevant to renewable energy applications. Since 2021, the extended consortium, including North-West University and the Centre for High-Performance Computing in South Africa, has remained active through an annual Chem4Energy conference series, with the sixth meeting taking place in Namibia in April 2025.

Keywords: capacity building; collaboration; sustainable energy.

Figure 1.

A methanol molecule is shown in the diagram (a) spinning isotropically, (b) rotating uniaxially or in a jump manner and (c) diffusing within a sphere. (Reproduced from [15] with permission from the Royal Society of Chemistry.)

Figure 2.

Image of the side-on configuration of methanol adsorption in zeolites Beta and MFI, where the molecules are aligned according to the RDF of the atomic pairs *Om-Ha, *H-O, *Hm-O and *C-O. Element colour code: O (red), Si (orange), Al (blue), H (grey), C (black). (Reproduced from [16] with permission from MDPI.)

Figure 3.

Transition state that leads to the formation of dimethyl ether after methanol dehydration.

Scheme 1.

Mechanism for the base-catalysed cleavage of the β-O-4 linkage found in lignin proposed by Mensah et al. [20] with permission from Frontiers in Chemistry.

Scheme 2.

Mechanism for the Fe- and Ru-xantphos catalysed cleavage of the β-O-4 linkage found in lignin proposed by Mensah et al. [20] with permission from Frontiers in Chemistry.

Figure 4.

Energy profile of the dehydrogenation of 1 using [Fe] and [Ru].

Figure 5.

(a) The synthesized pyrazolyl-based Ni(II) and Pd(II) complexes for the hydrogenation reaction. (b) Catalytic activities of the pyrazolyl complexes for the hydrogenation reactions. (c) Representative ¹H NMR spectrum of the hydrogenation of sorbic acid with molecular hydrogen to produce the intermediates.

Figure 6.

General scheme for the synthesis and characterization of the heterogeneous catalysts Fe₃O₄@C3 and Pd⁰@L1 from the homogeneous catalyst C3.

Figure 7.

Conversion of methyl stearate as a function of time and temperature.

Figure 8.

(a) Changes in the surface energy for seven low-Miller-index surfaces of $\mathrm{\beta }$-ZnP₂ induced by a half and full monolayer (ML) hydration and a full monolayer hydroxylation at 0 K. Because the (111) surface can accommodate three water molecules to form a full ML, the respective data point for lower coverage corresponds to a 0.33 ML and is hence shown in dashed border lines. (b) Changes in the surface energy of the (010) surface with respect to the chemical potential of water. (c) Changes in the surface energy of the (100) surface with respect to the chemical potential of water. (Reproduced from [48] with permission from the Royal Society of Chemistry.)

Figure 9.

Wulff morphologies of $\mathrm{\beta }$-ZnP₂ (a) in vacuum, (b) after hydration and (c) after hydroxylation. (Reproduced from [48] with permission from the Royal Society of Chemistry.)