Colloidal nanoparticle catalysts for sustainable energy applications
Abstract/Contents
- Abstract
- Rising greenhouse gas emissions drive climate change causing catastrophic consequences such as reduced crop yields and adverse weather disasters. Avoiding these climate outcomes requires development of technologies for both emission control, to convert pollutant gases such as carbon monoxide (CO) and hydrocarbons (HCs) into less harmful carbon dioxide (CO2), and CO2 conversion into useful products. The first part of my talk focuses on stable and active catalysts for exhaust emission control to eliminate the discharge of noxious gases from transport vehicles operating on fossil fuels. Platinum (Pt) and palladium (Pd) are excellent at combusting CO and HCs into CO2, but unable to maintain high performance under harsh conditions. Initially small PdPt nanoparticles (NPs) agglomerate into large crystallites with reduced surface area and, thus, lose their effectiveness. To prevent these metals from deactivation, I have developed a nanocasting strategy to encapsulate PdPt NPs inside alumina. Here, I embed the metal NPs inside a polymer, infiltrate the metal-polymer composite with an aluminum precursor, and calcine the resulting material to get the metal NPs distributed inside alumina. Such NPs demonstrate unprecedented stability by maintaining high rates for hydrocarbon combustion in the harshest operating environment the catalysts could be subjected to, thus surpassing state-of-the-art emission control materials. The second part of my talk is on developing catalysts for CO2 conversion into fuels and chemicals, by reacting CO2 with hydrogen. This reaction is not applied on a large-scale due to several challenges, including poor selectivity: instead of forming one desired product, the reaction forms a wide range of species, making a separation process prohibitively expensive. Overcoming this barrier requires identifying what specific sites on a catalyst surface are responsible for different products - given that the catalysts change under reaction conditions -- and designing catalysts with desirable properties. To this end, I make materials with controlled size, shape, and composition and track changes in their structure using X-ray absorption spectroscopy. Overall, my research efforts are focused on engineering catalysts for zero greenhouse gas emission energy technologies
Description
| Type of resource | text |
|---|---|
| Form | electronic resource; remote; computer; online resource |
| Extent | 1 online resource |
| Place | California |
| Place | [Stanford, California] |
| Publisher | [Stanford University] |
| Copyright date | 2021; ©2021 |
| Publication date | 2021; 2021 |
| Issuance | monographic |
| Language | English |
Creators/Contributors
| Author | Aitbekova, Aisulu |
|---|---|
| Degree supervisor | Cargnello, Matteo |
| Thesis advisor | Cargnello, Matteo |
| Thesis advisor | Bare, Simon |
| Thesis advisor | Jaramillo, Thomas Francisco |
| Degree committee member | Bare, Simon |
| Degree committee member | Jaramillo, Thomas Francisco |
| Associated with | Stanford University, Department of Chemical Engineering |
Subjects
| Genre | Theses |
|---|---|
| Genre | Text |
Bibliographic information
| Statement of responsibility | Aisulu Aitbekova |
|---|---|
| Note | Submitted to the Department of Chemical Engineering |
| Thesis | Thesis Ph.D. Stanford University 2021 |
| Location | https://purl.stanford.edu/wv879qj0385 |
Access conditions
- Copyright
- © 2021 by Aisulu Aitbekova
- License
- This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial 3.0 Unported license (CC BY-NC).
Also listed in
Loading usage metrics...