2008 Spring Symposium

 
Dion G. Vla­chos
Depart­ment of Chem­i­cal Engi­neer­ing
Cen­ter for Cat­alyt­ic Sci­ence and Tech­nol­o­gy (CCST)
Uni­ver­si­ty of Delaware
Newark, DE 19716–3110

Abstract — Future portable and dis­trib­uted ener­gy pro­duc­tion will hap­pen at much small­er­scales than the tra­di­tion­al econ­o­my of scales encoun­tered in oil and petro­chem­i­calin­dus­try. Reac­tors have to be much more com­pact and effi­cient and cat­a­lysts more active­and selec­tive. In this talk, three process­es of small­er scale hydro­gen pro­duc­tion will bep­re­sent­ed. The first is ammo­nia decom­po­si­tion on Ru.

Ammo­nia has one of the largest gravi­met­ric hydro­gen stor­age capac­i­ties and is an excel­lent COx-free fuel. We willd­is­cuss the chem­istry on Ru, the effect of par­ti­cle size and shape on activ­i­ty, and meth­od­sto find opti­mal cat­a­lysts. The oth­er process­es are par­tial oxi­da­tion and steam reform­ing ofmethane on Rh, a pro­to­type exam­ple of hydro­car­bon or bio­mass to syn­gas con­ver­sion­with inher­ent­ly more com­plex chem­istry. Steam reform­ing of methane to syn­gas has been­tra­di­tion­al­ly thought to be very slow and unsuit­able for onboard appli­ca­tion. We showthat all these process­es can run at sub­mil­lisec­ond con­tact times. The debate about directand indi­rect path­ways of par­tial oxi­da­tion is resolved by study­ing the under­ly­ing reac­tion­mech­a­nisms via mul­ti­scale mod­el­ing and com­par­i­son to micro­probe mass spec­ex­per­i­men­tal data.

Speaker’s Biog­ra­phy — Dr. Vla­chos is Pro­fes­sor at the Depart­ment of Chem­i­cal Engi­neer­ing atthe Uni­ver­si­ty of Delaware. He is cur­rent­ly the Drec­tor of the Cen­ter for Cat­alyt­ic­Science and Tech­nol­o­gy. His main research thrust is mul­ti­scale mod­el­ing and sim­u­la­tion­a­long with their appli­ca­tion to catal­y­sis and portable micro­chem­i­cal devices for pow­er­gen­er­a­tion, reform­ing of renew­ables and alter­na­tive fuels, cat­a­lyst informatics,microreactors, and process inten­si­fi­ca­tion.