MITei Seminar Series Turning CO2 into Liquid Fuel 11/12

Turning CO2 into Liquid Fuel Matthew Kanan Department of Chemistry Stanford University Tuesday, November 12 4:45 PM Room 66-110 MIT Campus

Abstract Controlling the atmospheric CO2 concentration may ultimately require recycling CO2 into liquid fuels and commodity chemicals using renewable energy as the power source. Arguably the greatest challenge for this vision is to develop efficient CO2 reduction catalysts. This talk will describe our development of “oxide-derived” metal nanoparticle electrocatalysts. These materials are prepared by reducing metal oxide precursors, which kinetically traps metastable nanoparticle structures with unique catalytic properties. I will describe examples of these catalysts that electrochemically reduce CO2 to CO at potentials close to the thermodynamic minimum as well as catalysts that selectively reduce CO to multi-carbon oxygenates. The catalysts operate in water at ambient temperature and pressure and are remarkably robust. The structural origins of the catalytic activity will be discussed based on diffraction and high-resolution electron microscopy. Oxide-derived metal nanoparticles enable a two-step electrochemical conversion of CO2 to ethanol that could make CO2 a valuable feedstock for synthetic liquid fuel. About the Speaker Matt Kanan is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Chemistry at Stanford. His research focuses on challenges in catalysis for renewable energy applications and fine chemical synthesis. His group has pioneered a new class of heterogeneous catalysts for electrochemical carbon fuel synthesis and experimental studies of electrostatic effects on the selectivity of catalytic reactions. Prior to Stanford, Matt was an NIH Postdoctoral Researcher in inorganic chemistry at MIT and did his Ph.D. research in organic chemistry at Harvard. The Seminar Series is made possible with the support of IHS-CERA.