“Unraveling the performance and heterogeneity of single catalyst particles: In-depth analysis of a single particle “

Unraveling the performance and heterogeneity of single catalyst particles: In-depth analysis of a single particle
Joint Doctorate
1st promotor: Prof. Albert van den Berg (UT)
1st supervisor and co-promotor: Associate Prof. Wouter Olthuis (UT)
2nd promotor: Prof. Bert Weckhuysen (UU)
2nd supervisor: Associate Prof. Mathieu Odijk (UT)
Affiliation: University of Twente and Utrecht University
Research theme: Storing Electricity from Renewable Sources in Chemical Bonds

Earlier work from the Weckhuysen group has indicated that FCC particle show tremendous intraparticle heterogeneity. However, most traditional ways to characterize catalyst particles can only measure ensemble averages. In this project, the focus is on the development of four new tools to study single FCC particles.

The tools include (1) microfluidic chips to study ionic transport in the pores of FCC particles using ion concentration polarization. Moreover, (2) the catalytic activity of a single particle can be studied in small reaction chambers by GC-MS. In a different chip, the composition of FCC particles can be studied using impedance spectroscopy (3). In recently submitted work, we demonstrate the sorting of FCC particles based on iron-content. In this project, laminar flow, drag forces and gravitational forces will be balanced inside a microfluidic chip to sort FCC particles based on differences in density (4).

Keywords:

• Single catalyst particle
• Impedance spectroscopy
• Particle sorting
• Microfluidics
• Ion concentration polarization