A new Australian Research Council (ARC) centre will build Australia’s expertise in sustainable manufacturing, driving the use of green chemistry to create environmentally friendly products while training the sector’s future leaders.

Flinders Professor Colin Raston, Professor Christopher Franco, Professor Wei Zhang, Associate Professor Youhong Tang, and Associate Professor Kirsten Heimann are part of the team led by Monash University that will partner with 28 organisations across three countries to deliver the Training Centre for Green Chemistry in Manufacturing, approved in the 2019 round of ARC Industrial Transformation Training Centres.

Funded for $3.6m over four years, the centre will attract a total of $7.7 million in cash and in-kind support and is expected to open up several PhD scholarships and post doctorate opportunities at Flinders.

“This new training centre will put Australia at the forefront of using green chemistry, which means another advantage for Australia’s manufacturing industry,” Minister for Education Dan Tehan said.

“The centre will provide postgraduate students and post-doctoral fellows with industry-relevant skills that will give them the confidence to lead the Australian manufacturing industry towards adopting green and sustainable technologies.”

Professor of Clean Technology Colin Raston is at the forefront of green chemistry, famed for unboiling an egg in 2015 and more recently, his team’s Vortex Fluid Device (VFD), which has revolutionised flow chemistry. The device can rapidly create a range of chemicals in water and other non-toxic liquids, significantly reducing the cost and environmental harm in a range of chemical processes. It has a myriad of potential uses, which are currently being explored with commercial partners.

Read more about Professor Raston’s work in the recent Brave Minds feature.