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Electrolyte–Electrocatalyst Interfacial Effects of Polymeric Materials for Tandem CO2 Capture and Conversion Elucidated Using In Situ Electrochemical AFM

Anonymous — Thu, 01 Aug 2024 06:00:00 +0000

Electrolyte–Electrocatalyst Interfacial Effects of Polymeric Materials for Tandem CO2 Capture and Conversion Elucidated Using In Situ Electrochemical AFM Anonymous (not verified) Thu, 08/01/2024 - 00:00

ACS APPLIED MATERIALS & INTERFACES, 2024, 16, 32, 42021-42033

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Converting captured carbon to fuel: Study assesses what’s practical and what’s not

Anonymous — Mon, 22 Jul 2024 06:00:00 +0000

Converting captured carbon to fuel: Study assesses what’s practical and what’s not Anonymous (not verified) Mon, 07/22/2024 - 00:00

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Insights into Electrochemical CO2 Reduction on Metallic and Oxidized Tin Using Grand-Canonical DFT and In Situ ATR-SEIRA Spectroscopy

Anonymous — Tue, 14 May 2024 06:00:00 +0000

Insights into Electrochemical CO2 Reduction on Metallic and Oxidized Tin Using Grand-Canonical DFT and In Situ ATR-SEIRA Spectroscopy Anonymous (not verified) Tue, 05/14/2024 - 00:00

ACS CATALYSIS, 2024, 14, 8353-8365

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Closing the Loop: Unexamined Performance Trade-Offs of Integrating Direct Air Capture with (Bi)carbonate Electrolysis

Anonymous — Wed, 01 May 2024 06:00:00 +0000

Closing the Loop: Unexamined Performance Trade-Offs of Integrating Direct Air Capture with (Bi)carbonate Electrolysis Anonymous (not verified) Wed, 05/01/2024 - 00:00

ACS ENERGY LETTERS, 2024, 9, 2472-2483

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Layered Sn–Au Thin Films for Increased Electrochemical ATR-SEIRAS Enhancement

Anonymous — Sun, 07 Apr 2024 06:00:00 +0000

Layered Sn–Au Thin Films for Increased Electrochemical ATR-SEIRAS Enhancement Anonymous (not verified) Sun, 04/07/2024 - 00:00

ACS APPLIED MATERIALS & INTERFACES, 2024, 16, 15, 19780-19791

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Elucidation of Critical Catalyst Layer Phenomena toward High Production Rates for the Electrochemical Conversion of CO to Ethylene

Anonymous — Mon, 08 Jan 2024 07:00:00 +0000

Elucidation of Critical Catalyst Layer Phenomena toward High Production Rates for the Electrochemical Conversion of CO to Ethylene Anonymous (not verified) Mon, 01/08/2024 - 00:00

ACS APPLIED MATERIALS & INTERFACES, 2024, 16, 3, 3246-3252

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Analyses of the Opportunities and Barriers associated with Electrochemical-Driven Decarbonization

Anonymous — Fri, 27 Oct 2023 06:00:00 +0000

Analyses of the Opportunities and Barriers associated with Electrochemical-Driven Decarbonization Anonymous (not verified) Fri, 10/27/2023 - 00:00

Daniel Morton

The Climate Crisis has already caused increases in the occurrence of major weather events, such as heat waves, wildfires, and sea level rise worldwide. With less than three months left, 2023 is on track to be the hottest year in a 174-year record.

A Review on previous analysis methods for electrochemical reduction of carbon dioxide

Decarbonization of the chemical industry through electrification

Barriers and opportunities for the deployment of carbon dioxide electrolysis in net-zero emissions energy systems

Analysis of the use of electrochemical carbon dioxide reduction for air-to-syngas pathways

The emission of carbon into the Earth’s atmosphere is driving this change and in 2022 CO₂ emissions reached an all-time-high of more than 36.8 Gt-CO₂. That is the equivalent of 368,000 fully loaded U.S. aircraft carriers, or put another way, 1 Gt is roughly twice the mass of all humans on the planet. In 2022 the world is further away from net-zero emissions than we have ever been before.

In order to effectively address the climate crisis, we cannot rely solely on a transition to clean and renewable energy sources and reduction of carbon emissions, we are going to need effective methods to remove the carbon we have already put into the atmosphere to mitigate the increasing frequency of extreme weather events. The technologies need to achieve this are still emerging, and there are many aspects that are not fully understood. Two RASEI Fellows, Bri-Mathias Hodge and Wilson Smith have, over the past two years, been part of a series of studies that have applied rigorous analysis and modeling approaches to provide a thorough assessment of decarbonization and carbon capture technologies that outline the barriers, and opportunities, of a circular economy for carbon.

These studies have explored a series of different perspectives on how electrification and the electrochemical reduction of carbon dioxide can impact different sectors in our efforts to accelerate decarbonization. The scope of these studies has been broad, exploring impacts on the transport sector, chemical (this study also brought in RASEI Fellow Kyri Baker as a collaborator), and industrial complexes. This includes everything from more efficient and direct methods for heating, to replacing the carbon building blocks we pull out of the ground in the form of oil and gas with ones we can pull out of the atmosphere.

The most recent article in this series, which was published this month in the Journal Energy & Environmental Sciences, revolves around the use of direct air carbon dioxide capture (DACC), powered by renewable electricity, to generate syngas, an essential industrial feedstock for the production of fuels, plastics, advanced materials, and medicines. The electrochemical carbon dioxide reduction approach offers a more energy efficient strategy that can produce this valuable commodity while reducing the amount of carbon in our atmosphere.

RASEI Fellows Bri-Mathias Hodge and Wilson Smith has been part of a series of collaborative studies that have explored the use of electrochemical carbon reduction.

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Evaluating the techno-economic potential of defossilized air-to-syngas pathways

Anonymous — Thu, 19 Oct 2023 06:00:00 +0000

Evaluating the techno-economic potential of defossilized air-to-syngas pathways Anonymous (not verified) Thu, 10/19/2023 - 00:00

ENERGY & ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCE, 2023, 16, 6127-6146

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Profile: Paige Brimley

Anonymous — Thu, 28 Sep 2023 06:00:00 +0000

Profile: Paige Brimley Anonymous (not verified) Thu, 09/28/2023 - 00:00

Daniel Morton

Paige Brimley is a Graduate Student at CU Boulder and joint member in the research groups of RASEI Fellows Charles Musgrave and Wilson Smith. A 2019 recipient of the DOE Graduate Assistance in Areas of National Need Fellowship (GAANN), Paige volunteered her time in 2022 to act on the Steering Committee of the United Nations Human Rights Right Here, Right Now Global Climate Summit, while still performing her research on renewable energy generation and carbon removal technologies. Paige sat down to tell us a little more.

Where are you from?

I grew up in Salt Lake City in Utah and I did my undergraduate at the University of Utah where I majored in Chemical Engineering, which I am also doing my degree at CU Boulder in. I spent my childhood just getting to hike, and ski and play soccer, I was really lucky. I got to be outside a lot, that helped my interest in science and the natural world.

What did you like to do as a kid?

Soccer was my biggest activity as a kid, I played every day after school and usually one or two days on the weekend. I loved it and I made some really good friends. It was a great trial for engineering – you have to work on a team, you have to communicate well, and you have to let your ego be at the wayside, and it was also just super fun. I got to go to southern Utah, and sometimes places in Idaho to play tournaments. The coaches always told me “You are going to miss this when you grow up” and I didn’t believe them, but I totally do!

What did you want to be when you were growing up?

I loved reading fantasy and Sci-fi novels, and that made me want to be a writer, but I also loved my science classes, which made me think I wanted to be a doctor. I took a bio class in high school that really engaged me. I was caught between English literature and science. I enjoyed chemistry, but my biology high school teacher was really dynamic and would do these beautiful chalk board drawings that really captured my attention. I was also one of those kids that wanted to do stuff that I enjoyed, rather than anything specific career-wise. My Dad was super supportive about education and always supported me when it came to my academic goals.

What are your hobbies now?

I enjoy running – I got so used to having activity everyday through soccer that when I stopped playing in college, I really missed it and realized that it was something valuable in my day, so I found running to be a good way to meet that need. I love to climb and I still love to ski, both cross country and downhill. Getting outside helps me stay focused and motivated for my research, because it can be easy to get disconnected when I’m in an office all day. I got into baking sourdough bread in college, and that has become something that I do pretty consistently. A friend of mine is a great potter and I have recently been taking a few classes with her. My research is computational, so having that very hands-on tactile experience, that is not screen-based, is really nice.

Speak about some of the strong influences in your life?

My high school bio teacher, Mr. Henschel, he was important in helping me be interested in science. My high school art teacher helped me, art was something different that I hadn’t really gotten into, so he was really foundational in encouraging me in doing things that I was uncomfortable doing, and in which I hadn’t had prior experience doing. I am definitely a type A person, I gravitate to things that I am good at, so it was really important for me to have a teacher who encouraged me to keep trying at things that I was not immediately good at.

In college I had a couple of amazing professors and mentors at the University of Utah. Tony Butterfield was an incredibly supportive, warm, and giving person, and he provides lots of opportunities for students to talk with him about engineering and dealing with the college experience. Kody Powell, he gave me my first real research experience, he leads a program that does manufacturing energy audits. Working on this expanded my mind on what I could with engineering and where my interests were. He was the first person that I worked on computational research with, and I hadn’t seen many women in this area, so having a mentor who was supportive was foundational for me going on to grad school to do computational research. Kody and Tony were both very helpful when I was putting together my applications and thinking through my choices.

Another person is a really good family friend, Julie Epperson, who was a constant presence in my childhood. She is someone who shows up for her people, and she was always there for me. She taught me how to really listen and be there for people you care about, even if they don’t ask or communicate that they’re struggling.

Tell us a little about your area of research

I am broadly working in electrochemical energy systems. Our lab specifically works on electrolyzers which make chemical products from electrical energy. Right now, I am working on water electrolysis, which produces hydrogen by splitting water, and CO2 reduction which takes CO2 (ideally captured from the air or industrial process) and converts it to value-added products such as ethylene or formate. The idea is that we could use renewable energy to power these processes and substantially decrease our reliance upon fossil fuels for energy and chemical production.

These devices are complicated though- they have very complex chemical reactions that are affected by the presence of large electric fields, contaminants, multiphase flow, etc. Additionally, these systems need to be very energy and resource efficient. Because of the many length scales involved, it can sometimes be very difficult to experimentally diagnose problems within the system and determine where energy in-efficiencies are coming from. What I do is the computational modeling of the device components, such as the membrane or electrolyte/catalyst interface, to try and better understand the processes occurring during operation, and identify ways to design better devices.

I work with a lot of experimentalists to better understand these systems. All of my projects are very collaborative, and I typically have an experimental counterpart who I work with to define research questions to investigate together.

I really enjoy this work because it has a lot of potential applications. These strategies can be used for chemical manufacturing, producing renewable energy, carbon capture, etc.

What would you say to someone considering a similar research career?

I think this depends on what stage they are at. As an undergraduate who is interested in renewable energy and considering grad school, they should try their hardest to get a research experience. It is the best way to decide if this is the kind of thing you would like to do. If it is hard to get that kind of experience, talk to your professors, look up some professional conferences in your area and see what folks are presenting on to understand what people in the field are looking at.

There are also a lot of startups in this area, so poke around at those. There are startups in energy policy, technology, or research, this will give you a good idea of the questions that people are asking and what problems they are looking to solve, and which of these are of interest to you. The Department of Energy’s website is also a good place to look just to get a general idea of research priorities in this area.

A great resource is to reach out to the students who are doing the research – send them an email. Ask about the work, the environment and what their experience is like. I am always happy to talk to someone who is interested in finding out more.

You were recently involved with the organization of the United Nations Right Here Right Now Human Rights Summit that was held in Boulder in late 2022. Tell us a little more about that experience.

My research advisor nominated me to join the Steering Committee. My motivation for doing this kind of research is improving the quality of people’s lives and in particular those that are impacted the most by climate change, so this was something that I was extremely interested in being part of. I took a class during my undergraduate degree that talked about historical chemical catastrophes, and these accidents were almost always located in places that were poor, racially segregated, or had little say in whether they wanted a chemical plant near them. The communities most impacted by climate change are those that are underserved and who contributed much less to the causes of climate change, and I wanted to be part of meeting that addressed these issues head on.

It has always been striking to me how disproportionate the impacts of climate change and the fossil fuel industry are. The communities most impacted by climate change are those that contributed the least to it and are therefore usually less prepared to respond to its impacts. One of the main things that made me excited to be part of this conference is that you can’t separate your research from the people it impacts,, so this was also a wonderful opportunity for me to learn more about the human side of these issues and hear from experts who think about this all day. I think about technology and computer modelling, but I know I can stand to learn the most from people who think about the human impacts of the devices I study. I went to a conference focused on carbon capture technologies last year, and the whole discussion was around “we need to do carbon capture”, but there were a few people who spoke up and said yes, and we need to think about how it is going to impact people and how, as a society we utilize carbon capture.

We need to keep working towards a just energy transition and we need to do everything possible to ensure equitable energy access, as well as carbon capture. These interactions really helped shape my thinking around these issues, especially in hearing from the diverse range of experts that we were able to bring together for the summit.

I firmly believe that you cannot tell people who have electricity to stop using it because it is coming from a fossil fuel source. You need to provide a viable renewable alternative and it needs to be in a way that engages, benefits, and builds communities, helping them to be sustainable and sufficient in a way that they are resilient to natural disaster, climate change, and geopolitical conflicts.

Tell us a little more about your role in the organization of this summit.

I was one of the student representatives on the Summit Steering Committee. A lot of the work that I was involved in was suggesting panel participants, defining what the panels would be, and going through and vetting participants. The idea was that we needed to make sure that we built a summit around global diversity, providing good representation and making sure that voices were heard. The guidance we received from the United Nations was to think globally, to make sure that we were inviting people from all over the world.

We talked a lot about having a youth component running through the summit, folks under the age of 24, (which is how the UN defines youth). We would make sure that we had a wide range of ages on panels, and we incorporated that perspective into almost all of the panels.

You have talked about collaboration and working as part of a team in both your research and your role in organizing this summit. Could you say a little more about how you see working in a team?

I enjoy teamwork, I love the opportunity to working with my peers and learn from people who are much better at things that I don’t think about as much. In the experimental side of research, I am fascinated talking to experimentalists and understanding better what is physically happening. In my computer I build an ideal model, and everything works the way I tell it to. Experimentalists must be really clever about the way that they are measuring things and setting up their systems which helps me think about things in a new way, and they usually come up with research questions that I wouldn’t have considered on my own. Working in a team, whether it is research or organizing a summit is a great way to learn from others.

I enjoy working in an environment where I can get constructive criticism from others, on things that I don’t know, or things that I could do better. Sometimes in the moment you are like “Oh no, I’m the worst”, but later, it can often be a great opportunity to grow. I think that approaching problems with humility and working with others that you genuinely enjoy working produces much better science.

Sometimes you end up in the weeds with the details of science, and it can feel really hard and really isolated. Having teammates to talk to and just commiserate with can be so valuable and is often something that really energizes me.

All of the people that I work with are so talented that it makes me excited for the future. The passion that they have makes me hopeful because I know amazing, dedicated people are working on these problems.

Speaking of the future, where do you see your research areas leading?

I would hope that in 20 years we will be carbon neutral. Most projections are stating that we need to get there by 2050, but I would hope that it is sooner because 2050 is a hard deadline. I would like to see a much greater focus on biodiversity and ecosystems in engineering and technical solutions. We really need to think a lot about the biological side, and how complex these ecosystems are. What is it we are doing to impact the non-human world and how do we minimize negative impacts? The work I am doing has a direct link into the renewable energy generation and carbon capture pieces of this puzzle, so I am very interested in working with people in policy or natural sciences to get more complete solutions.

Unfortunately, this work is extremely time constrained – we don’t have time to wait. Hence the UN Right Here, Right Now initiative. We must develop, optimize, and deploy these technologies by 2050 on a large scale, and we’re already behind schedule. So at the end of the day, I just want to be involved in developing solutions so that I can say that I tried my hardest to make a better world for future generations.

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Profile: Hussain Almajed

Anonymous — Mon, 04 Sep 2023 06:00:00 +0000

Profile: Hussain Almajed Anonymous (not verified) Mon, 09/04/2023 - 00:00

Daniel Morton

Hussain Almajed is a Graduate Student at CU Boulder and a joint member of the research groups of Dr. Wilson Smith and Dr. Bri-Mathias Hodge. Hussain joined the Steering Committee of the 2022 United Nations Human Rights Right Here, Right Now Global Climate Summit, while also keeping his research projects running, efforts that were recently recognized with the 2023 ECEE Outreach Award. Hussain sat down to tell us more about his experiences.

Where are you from?

I grew up in a small town in Saudi Arabia called Al Qatif, located on the east coast of the country. Al Qatif is famous for its rich soils and abundant palm trees and springs. On the east side of Al Qatif lies the Arabian or Persian Gulf, which offers a really nice corniche walk alongside the gulf. Unfortunately, some parts of the gulf contain quite a lot of pollution, something that was a strong motivation for me to go into climate change-based research.

What did you like to do as a kid?

I was an avid football / soccer defense player, it was one of my main hobbies. My cousins, friends, and I actually established a local football team that went on to play against some official Saudi football clubs! For a second, I was going to pursue this path officially, but I also wanted to get a college degree, so I had to choose between the two. As there were limited opportunities for football players back then in Saudi Arabia, I eventually decided to go to college!

What are your hobbies now?

I really enjoy hiking around Boulder, especially in the Summer and Spring times. Although I have been living in Colorado for more than eight years now, I have not skied before and that is something I would like to try and learn in the next couple of years. I still play some soccer, and I am improving my volleyball skills at the moment, albeit rather slowly! I do enjoy being outside, but I would probably say that I enjoy being at home just as much, I like to catch up on new movies and TV shows and play board games with friends and family.

Speak about some of the strong influences in your life?

I feel like everyone who I have interacted with have had something to do with where I am today. My whole family has been an extremely strong influence. In particular, my parents have helped me develop some leadership skills, things like responsibility and accountability. They have also instilled the love of helping others and have raised me to become an empathetic person, a trait that is needed to understand other people’s perspectives. My siblings have had their unique influences too, some of them pushed me toward challenging myself in research, others guided me through invaluable life lessons. The benefit of being the youngest sibling is that you can learn from all of your siblings’ past experiences! In addition to my parents and siblings, my fiancée has been my strongest supporter in the past eight years; pouring me with positivity and confidence, as well as listening to my foolish ideas.

How did you choose this area of research?

During my sophomore year in undergrad, I was interested in pursuing research questions and attempting to answer them using science, but I wasn’t sure what topic to pursue. I initially joined Dr. Sandeep Sharma’s computational research group at the department of chemistry here at CU Boulder, which exposed me to the different aspects and environments in research. That experience helped me be sure about wanting to go into research and move toward something where I could see some of the changes that I would be working on. I decided to pursue some research that is relevant to renewable energy applications, which led me to move towards electrochemical research in the group of Dr. Adam Holewinski. There, I worked on electro-oxidation of carbon monoxide and methanol, which are chemical reactions used in direct methanol fuel cells. I was able to build my fundamental understanding of electrochemistry and its role within the transition to renewable energy. I liked the experience and decided to join the master’s program in Chemical Engineering also here at CU Boulder. I was co-advised by Dr. Charles Musgrave and Dr. Wilson Smith (both RASEI Fellows) on a project that had a combination of quantum mechanics and electrochemistry. I employed computational methods to understand the fundamentals and mechanistic details of electrocatalysts for the electro-reduction of carbon dioxide to CO. The aim being to take this waste greenhouse gas and eventually convert it to a useful and valuable product, such as ethylene, which is used in plastics production.

During my Master’s, my work was focused on the atomic scale, which was really difficult to visualize its direct effect in the energy transition. Although the work was very interesting and fundamental, I found that I have a stronger interest in the bigger scales. I decided to benefit from the unique expertise of both Dr. Wilson Smith and Dr. Bri-Mathias Hodge during my PhD, working on system-level assessments of carbon dioxide removal and electrolysis technologies. My vision is that this work would guide questions and research programs towards relevant problems to realizing a smooth transition from fossil-based energy and fuels to cleaner alternatives.

Tell us a little bit about how you got involved with the Right Here, Right Now Summit.

With getting involved in the systems level research, I understood that in order for me to be effective in this space, I need to develop my leadership skills and look at a whole range of aspects including policymaking, economics, and the rights of indigenous communities. I started building my leadership interest, working through some courses, and mentoring high school and undergraduate students. My advisors knew about my interests and so when this opportunity was announced, they encouraged me to apply. I was both happy and surprised when I heard back from them as I was not expecting that to be involved in the Steering Committee of such a global event!

As part of the Committee, I worked to identify keynote speakers and panelists, providing well-thought opinions about the involvement of people in the summit. A key part of this effort was to organize the summit with respect to the diversity we were seeking to provide. Alongside this, we were looking at what events should support this summit, and how the whole program not only helps and informs the population of Boulder and Colorado, but the world as a whole.

One of the main pieces I was involved in was suggesting a side research event to be planned for alongside the summit, where graduate students can share their research about climate change and human rights. We had participants from across the different schools and departments, which was fantastic because they could present to attendees from across the globe.

The feedback and guidance we received from the United Nations, and the other stakeholders involved, was that we needed to bring together people from diverse global regions, races, ethnicities, and perspectives. It made us think bigger and I was very excited to learn how this process was deployed at that scale.

Personally, this experience helped shape my thinking about leadership and how complicated it can be. It was great to watch some of the best leaders from the various departments and organizations be involved in this summit, and I was excited to learn about how they navigate these complicated situations.

You have had the opportunity to work with a range of different teams, on a range of different problems. Tell us a little about how you see teamwork.

Teamwork not only produces well-thought ideas and opinions but also offers people with a sense of community that can build their trust and confidence in themselves and in their teammates. I see teamwork as a strong pillar that one can rely on to push themselves further. One of the benefits I have found working on a team, and this may sound strange, is watching others struggle with their work. It has made it easier for me to accept how I struggle with my own work, and actually acts to support me. Often, chatting with co-workers helps me focus on my work and be more productive. My teammates and I usually spend about 30 minutes every day to just chat, whether it is about life or research or anything really. Talking to peers can really increase one’s confidence about their work and can strengthen the personal connection between them, helping build a friendly environment for everyone to shine.

If all goes according to plan, where would you hope your research has an impact in the future?

The transition from fossil-based energy and raw materials is going to take some time. In about 10-20 years, I hope to see some of my work be implemented at a large scale, say a gigaton scale. I also hope to see the shift happening more directly toward converting carbon dioxide from the air or ocean into some valuable consumer products at scale. A lot of this is going to be so dependent on careful development and deployment of emerging technologies as well as on cultural and economical changes. That is why a holistic approach, in which considers a diverse set of experts and stakeholders, similar to the one promoted by RASEI, is needed for this transition to be implemented at the scale and speed needed.

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