Chemisorption System for the Development of Nanostructured Catalysts for Environmental and Energy Applications

新兴催化材料有可能使可再生能源转换和废物利用商业化，从而使能源部门发生革命性变化。例如，氢气可以通过太阳能和风能分解水来产生，并与二氧化碳反应生成可再生的合成燃料。商业化的低成本催化剂活性低，失活快，不适合用于二氧化碳转化。基于贵金属的催化剂活性高、稳定性好，但价格昂贵，这降低了它们的经济可行性。基于新兴材料(如碳化物、氮化物、石墨烯)和纳米结构(如纳米管、纳米棒、核壳纳米颗粒)的新型催化剂可以提供优异的催化性能，同时具有成本效益。开发新一代催化剂需要对材料表面进行详细的表征，因为在多相催化中，反应发生在催化表面和反应物相之间的界面上。用于这类分析的技术是化学吸附，与物理吸附不同，它涉及气体吸附物和表面位置之间的化学反应。 所需的化学吸附系统是一种高性能、全自动的分析仪，用于对催化活性表面进行定量和表征。该体系使用多种吸附剂，包括H2、CO、O2和NH3，适用于多种催化材料的表征。所要求的系统目前无法在威斯康星州大学校园或其附近使用，它将使先进多相催化方面的多学科合作计划得以建立。这份提案是由5名教职员工提交的；因此，我们预计在最初的5年里，至少有10名博士生和20名硕士研究生将接受该系统的培训。HQP将获得催化剂表征技能，这些技能在包括石油和天然气行业在内的各个行业都很需要，以及燃料电池等先进技术。该系统将被广泛用于表征新设计的材料，为基本理解催化反应的机理提供重要的见解。所获得的数据将支持或驳斥理论预测，为实验工作提供反馈，并最终将指导进一步研究商业上可行的催化材料的开发。研究活动将集中在开发新兴的纳米结构材料，用于三个领域：热催化、电催化和光催化。我们预计，研究成果将推动能源转换和废物利用技术的发展；这将转化为对加拿大经济的积极影响，因为这些技术属于快速增长的清洁能源领域。

Emerging catalytic materials have the potential to revolutionize the energy sector by enabling the commercialization of renewable energy conversion and waste utilization. For example, hydrogen can be generated by water splitting using solar and wind energy and reacted with CO2 to generate renewable synthetic fuels. Commercial low-cost catalysts are not suitable for CO2 conversion because of low activity and rapid deactivation. Catalysts based on noble metals are highly-active and stable but expensive, which reduces their economic viability. Novel catalysts based on emerging materials (e.g., carbides, nitrides, graphene) and nano-structuring (e.g., nanotubes, nanorods, core-shell nanoparticles) can provide superior catalytic properties, while being cost-effective at the same time. The development of a new generation of catalysts requires a detailed characterization of the material surface, because in heterogeneous catalysis, reactions occur at the interface between the catalytic surface and the reactant phase. The technique used for this type of analysis is chemisorption, which, unlike physisorption, involves a chemical reaction between the gaseous adsorbate and the surface site. The requested Chemisorption System is a high-performance, fully-automated analyzer for the quantification and characterization of catalytically-active surfaces. The system uses various adsorptives, including H2, CO, O2, and NH3, and is suitable for the characterization of a large variety of catalytic materials. The requested system, which is currently unavailable at the UW campus or in its vicinity, will enable the establishment of a multidisciplinary, collaborative program on advanced heterogeneous catalysis. This proposal is submitted by five faculty members; as such, we expect at least 10 PhD and >20 MASc students to be trained on the system over the first 5 years. HQP will gain catalyst characterization skills, which are in high demand in various industries, including oil and gas sector, as well as advanced technologies such as fuel cells. The system will be intensively used to characterize newly designed materials, providing important insights into the fundamental understanding of mechanisms of catalytic reactions. The data obtained will support or refute theoretical predictions, providing feedback to experimental work, and will ultimately guide further research towards the development of commercially viable catalytic materials. Research activities will focus on the development of emerging nanostructured materials for applications in three fields: thermocatalysis, electrocatalysis, and photocatalysis. We expect that research outcomes will advance energy conversion and waste utilization technologies; this will translate into positive impacts on Canada’s economy, as such technologies belong to a rapidly growing field of Clean Energy.