The emerging opportunity in the early 21st century is the utilization of low-cost electricity from domestic sources such as natural gas produced in the USA. Large-scale implementation of low cost power systems and production of natural resources via new technologies for power generation in distributed locations provides unprecedented opportunity for manufacturing of low-cost energy and materials. These technologies provide a pathway to abundant power that is generated rurally and transported to locations of high population density or distributed usage for agriculture or the military. The breakthrough manufacturing technology opportunity of the next decade is to catalytically convert low-cost distributed power to mobile liquid fuels such as fertilizers, fuels, or chemicals that can enable complete implementation of rural power technologies, providing domestic energy independence and affordable energy and materials.
Manufacturing of fuels, chemicals, or fertilizers requires a dramatic improvement in the performance of catalysts that promote the chemical transformation of energy-storing molecules. Three key reactions determine our domestic manufacturing future:
- Synthesis of Chemicals: With abundant hydrocarbons from petroleum and natural gas, selective oxidation catalysis produces foundational chemicals for materials
- Fertilizer Synthesis: Manufacturing of ammonia, NH3, a small energy-dense molecule is critical for domestic agriculture
- Methanol Synthesis: Carbon monoxide prepared from reforming of hydrocarbons (i.e., steam reforming of natural gas) provides one-carbon feedstocks that can be reduced to liquids such as methanol that serve as the core chemical in manufacturing larger chemical products.
While these reactions have been studied for a century, a new manufacturing approach is required to advance catalytic conversion to achieve faster rates in smaller, more efficient catalytic reactors.
Catalytic reactions can be accelerated and controlled via a new approach of "programmable catalysts." Chemicals on a catalyst surface can be perturbed by pulsed light or by electronically manipulating the electron/hole density of the catalyst surface. Within a 'catalytic condenser' example below, an alumina/graphene active bilayer undergoes oscillating applied bias (VCAT), allowing it to shift its strength of acidity with time. Reaction occurs when electrons have been depleted, and desorption of products proceeds under the least acidic condition.
Within the Center for Programmable Energy Catalysis, research will focus on using dynamic light and oscillating catalytic condensers to control and optimize catalytic reactions critical to a low-carbon energy future. Programmable catalysts are designed, fabricated, and characterized for study in catalytic reactors, with optimization occuring through the modification of the applied light or electronic input to the catalytic surface. Identifying dynamic catalytic surfaces that accelerate targeted elementary reactions will provide entirely new capabilities for catalytic throughput, selectivity, and conversion, thereby enabling energy storage as carbon-free energy fuels.