Felicia Wedlund

I did my bachelor and master of science at Linköping University in Chemical Biology, with a focus on enzymes and environmental issues. For my master’s thesis I worked at KTH Royal Institute of Technology with enzymatic degradation of the synthetic polymer polyurethane.

I am now a PhD student in the Organic chemistry group at the Department of Molecular Sciences at SLU in Uppsala, with Gustav Nestor as my main supervisor. My co-supervisors are Mats Sandgren, Johanna Blomqvist och Stergios Adamopoulos.

Many materials considered bio-based, such as fibreboards, are dependent on cross-linkers that are of fossil origin and often harmful chemicals. My research aims to find a bio-based adhesive alternative, for applications such as fibreboards and hydrogels, to decrease the dependence on toxic substances. Adhesives often require multiple carbonyl moites to cross-link, and a suitable starting material is required to achieve these functional groups. Hemicellulose is a polysaccharide with multiple hydroxyl sites, and by using oxidative enzymes, the hydroxyls can be oxidized to carbonyl groups. Optimization and scale-up of the process will be performed to improve the yield of oxidized oligosaccharides and to obtain a large quantity of cross-linkers. The produced cross-linkers will be tested on a variety of model compounds to assess their cross-linking efficiency, before applying them as cross-linkers for adhesives, for instance in fibreboards. To determine the composition and structure of the resulting products, I will use various methods, including NMR spectroscopy and mass spectrometry.