Catalysis for Green Fuel Processes and Environmental Remediation

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Climate change is a grand challenge facing society today, and while the move to electric and hybrid vehicles is happening slowly, there needs to be greener alternatives available for fuels used in internal combustion engines. This is particularly relevant in Canada, where the use of electrified vehicles may not be practical for the agricultural industry, for moving freight inland, for marine transport, or for rural or isolated northern indigenous communities. Recent green fuel trends include the fermentation of biomass to produce ethanol as a biofuel, and the reduction of carbon dioxide to methanol via electrocatalytic processes. Methanol and ethanol are both candidates for green spark ignition (SI) engine fuels, however need upgrading for use in compression ignition (CI) engine applications. Methanol and ethanol can be upgraded to dimethyl ether and diethyl ether respectively. In my research program, my objective is to investigate the reaction networks for the production of dimethyl ether from carbon dioxide and identify possible catalytic processes that will make the production of these fuels industrially feasible, and attractive for widespread use across Canada. With the production of these dimethyl ether and diethyl ether fuels, it must be ensured that the emissions from using these as fuels meet environmental regulations, which constitutes the second objective of my research program. To summarize, the goal of this research program is to design sustainable processes around producing green and alternative fuels centered around the chemistry and catalysis. We will use process modeling and analysis to determine the best reaction pathway from carbon dioxide to dimethyl ether. This process analysis will help us determine how we want to couple reactions, what opportunities we have to overcome any thermodynamic limitations during reactions by coupling reactions, and ultimately what criteria and operating conditions the catalyst will need to operate under. Understanding reactions at the mechanistic level will lead to insights at the process level, which is why we will perform careful kinetic and mechanistic studies to create and validate kinetic models. We will also integrate the ideas of coupling reactions over dual functional catalysts and/or rationally designing catalyst architectures which are specially designed for these novel catalytic processes. For the emissions of green fuels in CI or SI engines to meet environmental regulations, we will rationally design the emissions catalysts to oxidize the unburnt hydrocarbons and carbon monoxide and reduce nitrogen oxides for the emissions for engine technologies using these fuels or fuel blends. We can test and then refine our catalyst design through kinetic and mechanistic studies.