Dunwei Wang
Boston College, MA·Chemistry
Two challenges in cleaner chemistry connect these projects. The first is turning methane, the abundant but unreactive main component of natural gas, into useful chemicals without making waste.
- Fields
Chemistry
Materials Science
Engineering
- Topics
methane conversion
natural gas
photocatalysis
- Grants
- 2 known grants, through Aug 2029
What they work on
- Test whether short, intense light pulses followed by low-light intervals can steer the photocatalytic coupling of methane and carbon monoxide toward acetone rather than overoxidation to carbon dioxide.
- Determine how time-varying illumination controls the surface population of activated methyl intermediates (*CH3) by separating light-driven activation from thermocatalytic coupling, and assess whether the concept extends to reactions such as dry methane reforming.
- Test whether Acidothiobacillus ferrooxidans, acid-loving bacteria that draw energy from inorganic compounds, can grow and reproduce using iron from spent lithium-ion battery casings as their main food source.
- Evaluate whether the acidic solutions made by these bacteria leach key cathode metals such as nickel, manganese and cobalt from spent batteries, as a self-sufficient alternative to high-temperature or corrosive-chemical recycling.
More about the research
The second is recovering valuable metals from used lithium-ion batteries without high heat or harsh chemicals. Both look for gentler, more selective ways to drive chemical reactions: one uses carefully timed light, and the other uses living bacteria.
Why it matters
More selective methane conversion could lower chemical prices, cut pollution, and let industry make fuels and chemicals from natural gas with less waste. Bacteria-driven battery recycling could recover critical minerals such as nickel, cobalt, manganese and lithium from spent electric-vehicle and consumer batteries. It would avoid high-temperature processing and shipping corrosive chemicals, easing supply concerns for battery materials.
Known grants
From NIH and NSF research grants. Labs often have other funding we can't see.
Closest labs
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Lehigh University, PA·Chemistry
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Ekaterina Pomerantseva
Drexel University, PA·Materials Science
Test whether chemically preintercalating ions between the layers of MXene-derived bilayered vanadium oxide widens the interlayer spacing and speeds up zinc ion movement in aqueous zinc-ion battery cathodes.
Shiyu Zhang
Ohio State University, OH·Chemistry
Synthesize tricopper(II,II,I) peroxo complexes in cage-like ligands to model the short-lived peroxy intermediate of multicopper oxidases, and characterize their electronic features by spectroscopy.
The school
Boston College: 11 labs on PI Pages, $96M a year on research, 161 research doctorates a year.
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