Energy

We tackle technological challenges to sustainable fuel and energy production from solar, nuclear and biological sources, as well as process and safety challenges to extracting traditional petrochemicals. Our approach spans the design and creation of efficient catalysts used in energy production, to process engineering and technoeconomic assessment of new production and storage options. Some examples of our research activities include:

• Fabricating “chemical-plants-on-a-chip” to rapidly test heterogeneous catalyses that maximize energy recovery from biomass.
• Predicting the role and fate of inorganics in the industrial processing of woody biomass, emphasizing energy and atomic efficiency of the overall process.
• Developing lignocellulosic-based green energy storage devices and electronics wearables.
• Optimizing electrocatalysis processes for water splitting in membrane fuel cells.
• Developing high-performance battery technology through electrolyte and advanced electrode materials design.
• Advancing safe nuclear energy generation and waste management.
• Applying genomics and synthetic biology approaches to engineer microorganisms and microbial communities that recover energy from CO2 and organic waste.
• Designing new organic photovoltaic devices for harvesting solar energy.
  Investigating surfactant-based processes and transport phenomena associated with oil and bitumen extraction and industrial remediation of oil spills.
• Developing novel electrochemical processes for producing ultra high purity materials.