Electrochemical Ammonia Synthesis: Development of a Cell With a Hydrogen Permeable Electrode

Ammonia is essential for global food production as a component of fertiliser, and a potential energy carrier in the energy transition. Electrochemical ammonia synthesis faces numerous challenges as an alternative to the carbon intensive Haber-Bosch process, including competition from hydrogen evolution, and mass transport limitations. An...

Optimisation of in silico techniques for homogeneous transition metal based catalysis research

Many drugs cannot be made without homogeneous catalysis. To increase the yield of drug synthesis, the search for new catalysts continues. Computational catalysis is becoming a more prominent tool since it en- ables to screen many catalysts without performing (m)any laboratory experiments. In this research a com- putational workflow has been...

Automated data-driven exploration of chemical space for catalysts

Catalysts play an essential role in the daily lives of humans. These catalysts are used in many industries to make processes more energetically favourable. Climate change is pushing humanity towards the usage of more green energy and catalysts play an important role in this transition.For example, in the hydrogenation...

Development of a Catalysis Analytics Platform: Enabling Machine Learning in Catalyst Discovery

Recently machine learning (ML) has become increasingly popular, and has been shown to be a powerful predictive technique. The applications of ML cover a wide range of disciplines, including the natural sciences. Presently, the field of catalysis is still relatively unexposed to ML and other data-driven techniques. This can largely be attributed...

High Throughput DFT Calculations on Single Atom Catalysts for Solar Fuel Generation

Fossil fuels have been the primary source of rising energy requirements for humankind. However, the extensive use of fossil fuels has led to an increase in Earth's surface temperature. To tackle rising energy demands and the increase in Earth's surface temperature, various organizations like Inter-governmental Panel for Climate Change and the...

Dynamic Electrochemical Promotion of Catalysis

Electrochemical Promotion of Catalysis (EPOC) is a method for enhancing a catalytic reaction by modifying the surface properties of the catalyst through the application of a small amount of current or interfacial potential. It can also be used to enhance the selectivity of heterogenous catalytic reactions. It was first discovered by M. Stoukides...

Travelling microwave reactor design

In this work, the doctoral thesis of G.S.J. Sturm on microwave reactors was continued. Microwave reactors are developed, because they have potential to increase safety and economically reduce waste. This work focused on microwaves and chemical processes, instead of just heating water, by designing a travelling microwave reactor for non-oxidative...

Modelling and design of a flat plate fixed film photoreactor for phenol degradation

This paper presents the mathematical modelling and design of a flat plate photoreactor with a fixed film photocatalyst to degrade phenol. Phenol was used as target pollutant as it is one of the most studied contaminants in photocatalysis and it is present in many of the wastewater streams containing pesticides, drugs, and dyes which cannot be...

A Clean and Flexible Catalyst Synthesis Method: Metal nanoparticles on a fractal-like nanostructured metal oxide support

A highly porous fractal-like nanostructured metal oxide catalyst support with characteristic dimensions of a few nanometers is formed by producing metal nanoparticles in the gas phase, oxidizing them and depositing/sintering them on a nanofiber network. By admixing nanoparticles in the aerosol phase, these can evenly be distributed in the...

Microwave-assisted low temperature steam reforming of methanol for hydrogen production

Microwave effects on heterogeneous reactions are nowadays widely investigated due to the potential benefits coming from providing energy to the reaction zone in a different way. This study is focused on the investigation of the microwave effect on the low temperature steam reforming of methanol for the production of hydrogen. Therefore the...