Event
ChBE Seminar Series: Dongxia Liu, UMD
Tuesday, October 17, 2017
11:00 a.m.
2108, Chemical and Nuclear Engineering Building
Dongxia Liu
liud@umd.edu
Speaker: Dongxia Liu, Assistant Professor, UMD Dept. of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering
Title: Catalysis and Materials Synthesis: Innovative Catalyst and Membrane Reactor for One-Step Methane Upgrading
Abstract: Energy security and climate change are challenging problems for society. Natural gas, with large availability and low cost, represents an economically more attractive alternative and a more environmentally friendly feedstock, as equivalent carbon dioxide per unit energy is ~50% lower than liquid fuels and ~30% lower than coal. In the framework of the fuel switching scenario, one-step gas-to-liquids conversion is a necessity, but it has not been well developed for methane (the main constituent of natural gas) upgrading to value-added fuel and chemicals. As one of the promising pathways for natural gas upgrading, non-oxidative methane conversion (NMC) to hydrogen, light hydrocarbons and aromatics can achieve one-step methane upgrading and has gained a lot of attention. However, kinetic and thermodynamic constraints in NMC lead to low methane conversion at practical reaction conditions. In this presentation, Liu will summarize her team's contribution to the development of innovative catalysts and hydrogen and/or oxygen permeable membranes for NMC reactions in order to circumvent these limitations. They mainly focused on two generations of catalysts (metal/zeolite and iron/silica) and H2-permeable tubes and hollow fibers for mitigating the coking, enchanting the conversion and manipulating the product selectivity in NMC chemistry. The integration of multiple reactions within one reactor unit will be discussed towards the process intensification for natural gas upgrading.
