Advanced methodologies of valorization of catalytically active automotive waste for remediation of landfill leachates and organic synthesis

Waste produced annually worldwide has been increasing in the last decades due to the development of industrialization and the continuous growth of consumption. Within the sole European Union, 2.1 billion tons of waste are ended every year in landfills and such an excessive waste production increasingly impacts on environmental and human well-being as well as on the economic resources required for waste management. Due to the impossibility to eliminate the production of waste, the most profitable strategy to face issues related to its management consists in the development of sustainable approaches of waste revalorization in accordance with the principles of Circular Economy. Hence, reuse and recycling should be prioritized over the commoner option of disposal in landfill. Individual and collective actions to control and differentiate waste have been already adopted but they must be more and more implemented. This PhD project aims to develop an innovative and eco-friendly methodology to reduce the degree of pollution of landfill leachate concentrates expressed as the Chemical Oxygen Demand (COD) necessary to oxidize organic and inorganic pollutants present in 1 liter of leachate. The investigated novel strategy for reduction of COD values avails of supported and recyclable catalysts derived from spent Scrap Waste Automotive Converters (SCATs,) recovered and regenerated from end-of-life vehicles (ELVs). SCATs have been proven to act as efficient supported transition metal-based catalysts non only in oxidation reactions of landfill leachates but also, more in general, in organic synthesis. Indeed, this PhD research work provides the proof of principle that SCATs from ELVs can actually be promising catalysts for carbon-carbon bond forming eco-friendly cross-coupling processes, such as the Suzuki Miyaura cross-coupling of a series aryl halides with aryl boronic acids herein systematically investigated as the model reaction. This study paves the way to a new life of catalytic waste in Green Chemistry.