Yue Wu
Iowa State University, IA·Engineering
Turning natural gas into plastics starts with converting ethane and propane into ethylene and propylene. Today this is usually done by steam cracking, which uses a great deal of energy and releases large amounts of carbon dioxide, especially for ethane.
- Fields
Engineering
Chemistry
Materials Science
- Topics
heterogeneous catalysis
MXene
Mo2TiC2
- Grants
- 1 known grant, through May 2027
What they work on
- Determine what makes an atomically thin platinum nanolayer on Mo2TiC2 MXene, a layered metal-carbide support, stable during ethane dehydrogenation, using materials synthesis and in situ/operando characterization under reaction conditions.
- Explain why the platinum nanolayer resists coke buildup and particle sintering better than platinum nanoparticles, using theoretical computation together with kinetics measurements.
- Develop reaction-diffusion models of the MXene-confined catalyst that link stability and coking to catalyst performance, providing a basis for improved formulations of platinum-group catalysts.
More about the research
Catalysts, materials that speed up a reaction without being used up, could lower the energy cost. However, catalysts made of small platinum (Pt) particles stop working well for two reasons. Carbon deposits called coke build up on their surface. The particles also clump into larger ones, a process called sintering. Either problem means the catalyst has to be regenerated often.
Why it matters
Producing ethylene from ethane is very energy-intensive and a major source of carbon dioxide emissions. Catalysts that resist coking and sintering could make catalytic dehydrogenation practical for the chemical and petroleum industries. This could cut energy use and emissions in plastics production, and less frequent catalyst regeneration could lower costs.
Known grants
From NIH and NSF research grants. Labs often have other funding we can't see.
Closest labs
Jonas Baltrusaitis
Lehigh University, PA·Chemistry
Synthesize struvite microcrystals with tailored iron content and characterize their chemical composition and physical properties, to predict how this wastewater-derived fertilizer behaves in the environment.
Suljo Linic
University of Michigan, MI·Engineering
Synthesize plasmonic single atom alloy nanoparticles, silver or gold particles with isolated platinum, palladium, rhodium or ruthenium atoms at the surface, and characterize their geometry.
David Flaherty
Georgia Institute of Technology, GA·Chemistry
Synthesize gold-rich alloy nanoparticles containing palladium, platinum or rhodium at diameters of about 1–2, 6 and 10 nm, and track how gas adsorption and reactions restructure them over extended periods.
The school
Iowa State University: 23 labs on PI Pages, $462M a year on research, 327 research doctorates a year.
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