Bertrand Neyhouse

 

New Projects Available

• Redox flow battery scale-up and reactor engineering
• Characterization and reactor design for off-electrode catalytic processes
• Redox-active polymers for mediated electrochemical manufacturing
• Electrochemical processes for plastic recycling

Currently accepting graduate students? Yes

• MASc & PhD

Research interests

Ongoing demands to reduce anthropogenic carbon dioxide emissions have driven the chemical manufacturing industry toward more sustainable energy and materials utilization through electrification. To this end, electrochemical technologies offer several advantages, including direct compatibility with renewable electricity, mild reaction conditions, improved process safety, and distributed manufacturing. Indeed, electrochemical processes are responsible for several commodity (e.g., chlorine, adiponitrile) and specialty chemicals (e.g., pharmaceuticals), and the promise of sustainable electrosynthesis has fostered a renaissance in organic electrochemistry and catalysis, offering a myriad of pathways to valuable products. However, many leading-edge developments in organic electrosynthesis are performed only at batch scales in small quantities; while valuable for establishing new reaction pathways, such reactor formats do not scale effectively, providing an incomplete picture of their industrial viability. In pursuit of these challenges, we are building upon existing electrochemical engineering knowledge to expand the versatility and scalability of electrosynthetic platforms and advance new modalities for intensifying electrochemical manufacturing.

Our work aims to enable industrial electrification by (1) expanding electrochemical pathways for sustainable feedstocks (e.g., biomass, waste), (2) advancing grid-scale energy storage systems, and (3) scaling electrochemical analogues for existing thermochemical products. Research in our group leverages reactor prototyping, electroanalysis, mathematical modeling, and materials engineering to deliver practical electrochemical technologies.

 

Awards

AIChE Transport and Energy Processes Graduate Student Award (2022)

Martin Fellowship for Sustainability (2022)

Distinguished Young Scholars Seminar (2022)

National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship (2018)

 

Memberships

Electrochemical Society

Canadian Society for Chemical Engineering

American Institute of Chemical Engineers

 

Selected publications

See a complete list on Google Scholar

• B. J. Neyhouse, F. R. Brushett. A spreadsheet-based redox flow battery cell cycling model enabled by closed-form approximations. J. Electrochem. Soc. 2024. In press.
• B. J. Neyhouse, R. M. Darling, J. D. Saraidaridis, F. R. Brushett. A method for quantifying crossover in redox flow cells through compositionally unbalanced symmetric cell cycling. J. Electrochem. Soc. 170, 080514. 2023.
• B. J. Neyhouse, J. Lee, F. R. Brushett. Connecting material properties and redox flow cell cycling performance using zero-dimensional models. J. Electrochem. Soc. 169, 9, 090503. 2022.
• B. J. Neyhouse, K. M. Tenny, Y.-M. Chiang, F. R. Brushett. Microelectrode-based sensor for measuring operando active species concentrations in redox flow cells. ACS Appl. Energy Mater. 4, 12, 13830–13840. 2021.
• B. J. Neyhouse, A. M. Fenton Jr., F. R. Brushett. Too much of a good thing? Assessing performance tradeoffs of two-electron compounds for redox flow batteries. J. Electrochem. Soc. 168, 050501. 2021.
• B. J. Neyhouse, T. A. White. Modifying the steric and electronic character within Re(I)-phenanthroline complexes for electrocatalytic CO2 reduction. Inorg. Chim. Acta 479, 49–57. 2018.
• B. J. Neyhouse. A vision for policy education in science. MIT Sci. Pol. Rev. 4, 1–2. 2023.