【报告人】： 海天学者 李文震

【报告时间】：7月7日（周二）13:30

【报告地点】：G01-E402

【报告内容】：

Biomass is abundant, inexpensive and renewable, therefore, it is highly expected to play a significant role in our future energy and chemical landscapes. The US-DOE has identified some platform compounds (or building blocks, i.e. glycerol, levulinic acid, furfural, etc.) that can be readily derived from biomass, and currently the chief research need is to develop cost-effective, green and sustainable approaches to utilize these biorenewable feedstock. I will present our recent research progress in exploration of aqueous phase electrocatalytic processing of the biomass platform compounds for generation of electricity, chemicals and fuels. We investigated electrocatalytic selective oxidation of polyols for cogeneration of higher-valued chemicals and electricity, and discovered that the degree of glycerol oxidation on Au nanoparticles can be well tuned with anode potential to produce tartronate (oxidizing two primary –OH, ≥ 0.35 V), mesoxalate (oxidizing three –OH, ≥ 0.45 V) or glycolate (breaking C-C bond, ≥ 0.9 V). Our work may open a new route for the controllable transformation of biomass compounds with poly- or multi-functional groups into valuable chemicals. We further developed a direct crude glycerol (88%) anion-exchange membrane fuel cell with self-prepared carbon nanotube supported surface dealloyed PtCo nanoparticle anode catalyst (0.5 mgPt cm and commercial Fe-based cathode catalyst, which demonstrated a record high output peak power density of 268 mW cm (at 80 C and ambient pressure) and decent operation stability and system durability. We also explored electrocatalytic processes to store renewable electricity in biofuels / biofuel additives, and have demonstrated electrocatalytic hydrogenation (ECH) of levulinic acid (LA) to higher energy-density biofuel intermediates: valeric acid (VA) or γ-valerolactone (gVL) on non-precious Pb electrode with high yield and faradaic efficiency in a single electrolysis flow cell reactor. The applied potential and electrolyte pH were found to control the product distribution. It is interesting that formic acid (co-produced with LA in cellulose hydrolysis stream) can increase the rate of ECH of LA to VA. Our recent research in Cu foil with nanostructured surface for efficient ECH of furfural to methyl furan biofuel additives will also be presented.

【报告人简介】

Dr. Wenzhen Li is a Richard Seagrave Associate Professor (with tenure) in the Department of Chemical and Biological Engineering Department at Iowa State University, and an Associate Scientist at US-DOE Ames Lab. His research interests are in the areas of catalysis, electrochemical energy, biorenewables and advanced materials. Dr. Li has 71 peer-reviewed journal articles with 7300 citations, 6 issued patents, and his h-index is 37. He is one of the pioneer researchers who discovered that carbon nanotubes can serve as a better fuel cell catalyst support than conventional carbon black. His current research efforts are to develop advanced electrocatalysts and explore novel electrocatalytic processes for sustainable production of electricity, valuable chemicals or fuels from biorenewable feedstock and greenhouse gas CO2. Dr. Li completed his B.S. research in 1998 under Dr. Can Li’s guidance and received his Ph.D. in 2003 from Dalian Institute of Chemical Physics of Chinese Academy of Sciences with Drs. Qin Xin and Gongquan Sun, and worked as postdoctoral researcher with Prof. Masahiro Watanabe at University of Yamanashi (2003-2004) and with Prof. Yushan Yan at University of California Riverside (2004-2007); research scientist at SUNY College of Nanoscale Science and Engineering at Albany (2007-2008), and assistant (2008-2013) to associate professor (20013-2014) at Michigan Technological University.

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