Light-Driven Reactive Carbon Capture: A Journey from Photoelectrochemistry to Photocatalysis
Event details
| Date | 17.11.2023 |
| Hour | 16:15 › 17:15 |
| Speaker | Shu Hu received his Ph.D. (2011) from Stanford University in Materials Science and Engineering. Between 2012 and 2015, he did postdoctoral work in the Department of Chemistry with Professor Nathan S. Lewis at California Institute of Technology, where he discovered coating-stabilized photochemical interfaces. Starting an independent career at Yale, Prof. Hu's work spans from photocatalysis, semiconductor-liquid interfaces, to nanoscale semiconductor synthesis and operando spectroscopy. His group is interested in sustainable chemical production and reaction engineering, taking inputs of sunlight, air, and seawater. He is on the editorial board for Frontier in Chemistry. He has won a number of awards, notably from DOE Early Career program and DOE Energy EarthShot Hydrogen program. A list of awards include the Journal of Materials Chemistry Young Investigator Award (2018), ECS Energy Division Young Investigator (2019), Scialog Fellow for Negative Emission Science (2020), DOE Early Career Award (2021), Future Scholar Award from Global Academy of Chinese Chemical Engineers (2022). |
| Location | Online |
| Category | Conferences - Seminars |
| Event Language | English |
Abstract :
Great strides have been made in decarbonizing our energy system, but there are a handful of scenarios that still require hydrocarbon fuels and chemicals, such as aviation, long-haul trucking, and shipping. Direct air capture of ~420 ppm CO2 generates carbonates but requires energy-intensive processes to produce pure CO2, which, however, mostly ends up as dissolved carbonate byproducts. Seawater is dissolved with ~ 2mM bicarbonate and is acidifying. Thus, one can consider converting dissolved inorganic carbon (DIC), including carbonate and bicarbonate ions, directly to hydrocarbons.
Hu lab at Yale investigates photocatalytic CO2 reduction (CO2R) in a DIC solution (pH > 11) with ~0 mM dissolved CO2(aq). We innovatively modulate the 100-nm scale transport of protons during photocatalytic CO2R: a flux of H+ effectively acidifies DIC species to generate CO2(aq), and these transient CO2(aq) molecules are long-lived enough to participate in light-driven CO2R. I will first elucidate the chemical physics of photocatalysis involving coupled light absorption, charge separation, charge transfer, and chemical transport. One-step reactive carbon capture without separating the 420 ppm CO2 in the air can fulfill a circular carbon economy and mitigate our society’s carbon emissions. I will reveal a pathway toward 100% photon-to-chemical conversion quantum efficiency by combining in situ potentiometry, Raman spectroscopy, and synchrotron-based techniques.
Great strides have been made in decarbonizing our energy system, but there are a handful of scenarios that still require hydrocarbon fuels and chemicals, such as aviation, long-haul trucking, and shipping. Direct air capture of ~420 ppm CO2 generates carbonates but requires energy-intensive processes to produce pure CO2, which, however, mostly ends up as dissolved carbonate byproducts. Seawater is dissolved with ~ 2mM bicarbonate and is acidifying. Thus, one can consider converting dissolved inorganic carbon (DIC), including carbonate and bicarbonate ions, directly to hydrocarbons.
Hu lab at Yale investigates photocatalytic CO2 reduction (CO2R) in a DIC solution (pH > 11) with ~0 mM dissolved CO2(aq). We innovatively modulate the 100-nm scale transport of protons during photocatalytic CO2R: a flux of H+ effectively acidifies DIC species to generate CO2(aq), and these transient CO2(aq) molecules are long-lived enough to participate in light-driven CO2R. I will first elucidate the chemical physics of photocatalysis involving coupled light absorption, charge separation, charge transfer, and chemical transport. One-step reactive carbon capture without separating the 420 ppm CO2 in the air can fulfill a circular carbon economy and mitigate our society’s carbon emissions. I will reveal a pathway toward 100% photon-to-chemical conversion quantum efficiency by combining in situ potentiometry, Raman spectroscopy, and synchrotron-based techniques.
Practical information
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Organizer
Contact
- Prof. Sophia Haussener