Research Projects

The electrocatalytic reduction of CO2 (ECR) powered by renewable electricity is a promising strategy to mitigate high CO2 levels and valorize greenhouse gas into high energy-density carbonaceous fuel. However, the current state of the art is poor, and there are still significant breakthroughs needed before it can be considered a viable economical process. The formation of higher order multicarbon products (C2 products) is more desirable due to their higher energy densities and wider applicability. The reduction process remains challenging due to the bottleneck of controlled C-C coupling over catalyst surfaces. The proposal focuses on designing and developing high surface area, porous, and highly conducting metal organic framework MOF derived single atom catalysts (SACs) for ECR. The collaboration will facilitate fine tuning of appropriate SAC materials for selective ECR to C2 products, especially ethanol with high Faradaic Efficiency. In-situ spectroscopic studies and DFT calculations will be conducted to understand the molecular mechanism of synthesized SACs. High-fidelity techno-economic-analysis and life cycle-analysis models will be developed to evaluate the economic and environmental benefits, feasibility, and scalability of the process.