To design high-performance catalyst materials for sustainable processes, comprehensive insight into their functioning as well as structure-property relations is needed.
While model studies often use conditions, which are far from industrial reality, modern spectroscopic in-situ and operando instrumentation enables to study catalytic processes and materials under (close to) realistic conditions.
The symposium ‘Catalysis under Realistic Conditions’, to be held on November 16, 2018 at Eindhoven University of Technology, features invited national and international expert and highlights research of MCEC member groups.
With this symposium, the newly installed Near-Ambient Pressure X-ray Photoelectron Spectrometer (NAP-XPS, click here for more pictures) will be inaugurated and first exciting results will be presented. After five scientific talks, the symposium will conclude with a lab-tour including instrument demonstration and drinks afterwards.
Participation is free, registration (see below) is mandatory. Please register before November 1st.
We are very pleased to announce that Detlef Lohse will be awarded the prestigious Balzan Prize 2018 for his fluid dynamics research. The price, of 750,000 Swiss Francs, will be awarded during an official ceremony in Rome, in November.
According to two eminent jury members, Etienne Ghys (research director of the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique in Lyon) and Carlo Wyss (former director of accelerators at CERN in Geneva), “Professor Lohse is assigned the prize for his exceptional contributions in the most diverse fields of fluid dynamics, such as the transition to turbulent regimes in the Rayleigh-Bénard convection, the study of multi-phase turbulent flow, sonoluminescence, the properties of bubbles and drops down to a microscopic level, micro and nano fluidics”.
All lectures are open to both MCEC members and all other people interested; registration is not required. Also, PhD lectures will be organized in Eindhoven and Utrecht for all MCEC PhDs and PDs.
Program:
Wednesday 15 May – Eindhoven University of Technology
13.30 – 16.00
PhD short lectures (working in multiscale modelling) with informal discussions
location: Helix, STW 3.46
About Prof. Karsten Reuter Prof. Karsten Reuter’s (b. 1970) research activities focus on a quantitative modeling of materials properties and functions. He specifically works on multiscale models that combine predictive-quality first-principles techniques with coarse-grained methodologies to achieve microscopic insight into the processes in working catalysts and energy conversion devices. For this, he unites methods and concepts from the disciplines of physics and chemistry as well as materials science and engineering.
Karsten did his doctoral studies on theoretical surface physics in Erlangen, Madrid and Milwaukee. Following research experiences at the Fritz Haber Institute of the Max Planck Society (MPG) in Berlin and the FOM Institute in Amsterdam, he headed an independent MPG junior research group.
Since 2009 he holds the Chair for Theoretical Chemistry at the Technical University of Munich (TUM). He recently held visiting professorships at Stanford (2014) and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (2018), and is the coordinator of the Munich Cluster of Excellence e-conversion.
About Prof. George Huber George W Huber is the Richard Antoine and Dororthy O’Brien Professor of Chemical Engineering at University of Wisconsin-Madison. His research focus is on developing new catalytic processes for the production of renewable liquid fuels and chemicals.
He has received several awards including the AICHE Colburn award, the Thomson Reuters highly cited researcher award, the Camille Dreyfus Teacher-Scholar award, and the NSF career award. He is co-founder of of two startup companies Anellotech (www.anellotech.com) and Pyran, which are both focused on commercializing technologies he developed in his laboratory that convert biomass into different fuels and chemicals.
In summer of 2015, George did a sabbatical visit with Professor Tao Zhang at Dalian Institute of Chemical Physics. George did a post-doctoral stay with Avelino Corma at the Technical Chemical Institute at the Polytechnical University of Valencia, Spain (UPV-CSIC). He obtained his Ph.D. in Chemical Engineering from University of Wisconsin-Madison (2005) under the direction of James Dumesic. He obtained his B.S. (1999) and M.S.(2000) degrees in Chemical Engineering from Brigham Young University where he studied under the direction of Calvin Bartholomew.
George has published over 160 peer-reviewed publications that have been cited over 28,000 times and has over 19 patents/patent applications.
Interview Prof. Karsten Reuter In 2017, Karsten Reuter was one of the speakers at the MCEC mini-symposium. He was interviewed by MCEC PhDs Jeroen Vollenbroek and Anne-Eva Nieuwelink about his background and interest in theoretical chemistry, and the unavoidable change from fossil towards renewable sources:
Emke Molnar (former MD MCEC) thanks Prof. Karsten Reuter
“Very soon we will be able to sustainably produce certain base fuels at costs lower than through fossil resources. This will be the key moment, because then we will stop burning something as precious as oil, which in itself generates big problems because of the huge amounts of fuel that we need. So here we have this very valuable chemical and what do we do? We burn it. I think it’s unavoidable that the situation will change in the next ten years.” Read the full interview here.
My name is Daan van Arcken. I have recently joined the MCEC office in Utrecht as Communications Assistant. Before this, I worked as a bike messenger for De Fietskoerier Utrecht. I actually still do that part-time now.
Next to riding my bike, I’ve enjoyed working at many different companies doing many different things. For example, at Kugler Publications I was in charge of the digital publication process. I made sure deadlines were met, in-text citations referred to actual sources and the result looked somehow professional in the end.
My role at the MCEC Office will be to assist the program coordinator Nina and communications officer Christine. I am very enthusiastic about joining the MCEC team. I’ve already had the chance to meet some of the research group in Utrecht and I look forward to visiting Eindhoven and Enschede soon.
If you have any questions, want to go out for a bike ride or talk about music feel free to contact me at d.r.vanarcken@uu.nl or via LinkedIn.
Prof. Veronique van Speybroeck (Center for Molecular Modeling, Ghent University) is recipient of the second MCEC Lectureship Award. In September 2018, she will visit the different MCEC research groups, give scientific lectures and participate in scientific discussions.
Prof. Van Speybroeck’s lectures are open to both MCEC members and other interested parties. Registration is not required. For MCEC PhDs and PDs, the lectures are obligatory.
Prof. Van Speybroeck is the second recipient of the MCEC Lectureship Award. In May 2017, MCEC welcomed Jeffrey Rimer, Associate Professor of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering at the University of Houston. An interview about his lectures and experiences can be found here.
MCEC is looking for highly motivated and creative PhD candidates in the fields of Chemistry, Physics and/or Engineering, who aspire to jointly and multidisciplinary address one of the grand challenges of today: sustainable energy conversion.
Please visit this page for more information (temporarily also accessible via the menu above, via Home).
When gold nano particles in water are illuminated by a laser, they get very hot: well above the boiling point of water. The formation of vapour bubbles caused by this, is well-known. New experiments, however, using a very high speed camera, now show that before this, a bubble is formed that is much larger and, subsequently, explodes violently. For energy conversion of the particles to the liquid they are in, this discovery of early phase dynamics is very important. MCEC researchers now publish these new results in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the USA (PNAS).
Nanoparticles locally speed up the boiling of water when laser light illuminates them. At the surface of the particles, electrons collectively oscillate. Vaporization via these so-called ‘plasmons’ is much stronger than in case you would just locally heat the water using a laser. Until now, the ‘early youth’ of this bubble formation was not taken into account, while this first phase of nucleation and early dynamics determines the subsequent phases to a high extent.
Brandaris camera
Until now, the bubble behavior was studied at time scales of milliseconds. Thanks to the very fast camera ‘Brandaris128’, developed by the University of Twente, it is now possible to look even at the nanosecond timescale. A little while after the nanoparticle heats up, a bubble is formed that is a hundred times bigger in volume than the later bubbles. This bubble explodes, followed by smaller bubbles oscillating. In the end, the well-known mechanism takes over, of bubbles that grow by vaporization of water and by diffusion of the gas that is dissolved in water.
Pure vapour
Intuitively, you would expect the size of this initial giant bubble getting bigger with a higher laser power on the nanoparticle. In reality, it is the other way round. At a lower laser power, it takes more time for the bubble formation to start, but this is explosive. The size is also determined by the amount of gas in water: ‘gas poor water’ gives larger bubbles. Here, also the delay plays a role. Experiments and calculations show that the giant bubble is a pure vapour bubble and not a gas bubble: the maximum volume is linearly dependent of the energy.
Effective catalysts
By controlling the early-start dynamics and violence, the applications of the nanoparticles can further be exploited. The bubbles enhance energy conversion, but the explosive growth could even cause damage in surrounding tissue, in medical applications. Nano particles will be used as catalysts, for speeding up chemical reactions. For this application, the newly discovered explosive growth can be an advantage.
The research has been done within MCEC. Contributors to the paper are from University of Twente, MESA+ and TechMed institutes, specifically the groups: Physics of Fluids, BIOS Lab-on-a-Chip, Physics of Interfaces and Nanomaterials, as well as the Inorganic Chemistry and Catalysis group from Utrecht University.
The NWO Domain Applied and Engineering Sciences had granted Emiel Hensen (TU/e) with a Take-off proposal grant for Vertoro. This start-up valorises the catalytic process for lignin depolymerisation, as developed bij Emiel Hensen and his team at Eindhoven University of Technology.
Lignin is a waste stream of bioethanol plants and paper mills. Vertoro, a spin-off of the InSciTe consortium Emiel Hensen is board member of, aims to scale up the above mentioned chemical process, to produce a so-called crude lignin oil (CLO). This oil will then serve as platform for resins, chemicals and fuels – just like fossil crude oil, but made out of waste. At the start of 2019, a pilot plant will be ready at Brightlands Chemelot Campus in Geleen.
We congratulate Emiel Hensen and his team on this award!
L.t.r.: Michael Boot (TU/e fellow and Vertoro CEO), Panos Kouris (TU/e PhD and Vertoro CTO) and Emiel Hensen (Dean of the TU/e department of Chemical Engineering and Chemistry, and MC MT member).
MCEC is more than a research center: amongst other things, it aims to train its PhDs in reaching out to the public, by explaining complex research content to a general audience (from secondary school students to retirees with an interest in the matter, and anyone beyond and inbetween). PhDs who would like to practice their communication skills can do so by joining the team of authors and vloggers behind MCEC-matters.com, or gain experience as a teacher by giving guest lectures.
Over the last two years, several MCEC PhDs have voluntarily contributed to the success of MCEC as a research center that not only crosses the frontiers of three universities and disciplines, but also reaches out from academia to society. We thought it high time to acknowledge their efforts.
Emiel Hensen has been admitted as a Fellow of the Royal Society of Chemistry (RSC). The Fellow status is awarded to individuals who have “made an outstanding contribution to the advancement of the chemical sciences; or to the advancement of the chemical sciences as a profession; or have been distinguished in the management of a chemical sciences organization.
Our sincere wishes on this great assignment!
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4 May 2018
News
10 years of MCEC!
After a decade of impactful and innovative research, the MCEC Research Center is now entering its final phase. Since 2024, […]
Prof. Karsten Reuter’s (b. 1970) research activities focus on a quantitative modeling of materials properties and functions. He specifically works on multiscale models that combine predictive-quality first-principles techniques with coarse-grained methodologies to achieve microscopic insight into the processes in working catalysts and energy conversion devices. For this, he unites methods and concepts from the disciplines of physics and chemistry as well as materials science and engineering.
George W Huber is the Richard Antoine and Dororthy O’Brien Professor of Chemical Engineering at University of Wisconsin-Madison. His research focus is on developing new catalytic processes for the production of renewable liquid fuels and chemicals.
