One of the major issues in the biomass gasification technology is how to efficiently deal with biomass tars which cause difficulties in the downstream processes. The tars can be reduced by metal catalysed cracking processes but today's processes require a rather high temperature which is not favourable from an energy perspective.

The main objective of this project is to lay the foundation for efficient catalysts for tar cracking that operates at low temperature. Using quantum mechanics simulations, the electronic structures and charge distribution of key intermediates that represent the tar composition will be analysed to elucidate the chemistry of materials behind catalytic reactions to reveal the most important interactions.