The emerging opportunity in the early 21st century is the utilization of low-cost electricity from new sources around the world. 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 low-cost power. These energy technologies provide a pathway to abundant power can be stored for times when we need it and transported to locations of high population density or distributed usage for agriculture or the military. The breakthrough technology opportunity of the next decade is to catalytically convert low-cost distributed power to mobile liquid fuels that can enable complete implementation of rural power technologies, enabling a global power system providing energy to the world.
Storage of distributed power as fuels, chemicals, or fertilizers requires a dramatic improvement in the performance of catalysts that promote the chemical transformation of energy-storing molecules. Four key reactions determine our energy-managment future:
- Synthesis of Reductants: With water as a feedstock, but it must first be converted via reforming or electrocatalysts using engineered surfaces
- Ammonia Synthesis: Reductant gases can be combined with N2(g) obtained from air to form ammonia, NH3, a small energy-dense molecule important for agriculture
- Emissions Control: Capture and conversion of manufacturing emissions provides new opportunity for improved efficiency of the utilization of natural resources
- Methanol Synthesis: Carbon monoxide prepared from reforming of waste materials (i.e., gasification) provides one-carbon feedstocks that can be reduced to liquids such as methanol.
While these reactions have been studied for a century, a new 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.