Welcome to the Porosoff Research Group!
The Porosoff group focuses on developing new catalysts for upgrading C1 and C2 resources (CO2, CO, CH4, C2H6) for efficient energy storage and low-cost production of plastics, chemicals and fuels. Understanding the relationships between chemical reactivity and catalyst electronic/structure properties are extremely important for developing catalysts that exploit particular reaction pathways. This approach requires controlled synthesis of catalysts combined with in situ techniques and theoretical calculations. In particular, target areas of research are three types of catalytic reactions for improved shale gas utilization and lowering CO2 emissions: (I) Catalyst development for CO2 hydrogenation, (II) Selective synthesis of light olefins from CO and H2 and (III) Catalytic dehydrogenation of light alkanes to olefins by CO2. Experimental work combines a mix of catalyst synthesis and characterization, reactor studies and in situ spectroscopy.
Highlights and News
April 4, 2023
Congratulations to Renjie, now Dr. Renjie Liu for successfully passing his PhD defense!
July 21, 2022
Congratulations to Jane Agwara and Prof. Porosoff for the recently accepted ChemCatChem manuscript: Challenges and Opportunities of Fe-based Core-Shell Catalysts for Fischer-Tropsch Synthesis!
July 20, 2020
Reporters from WROC TV channel 8 visited the lab today to cover a news segment on our recently published manuscript which has been gaining press attention since last week. To watch the full clip, click here and for more press info, click here.
July 17, 2020
The lab’s newly published manuscript: Assessing the viability of K-Mo2C for reverse water-gas shift scaleup: Molecular to laboratory to pilot scale gets press attention! EurekaAlert published it on the 15th of July 2020 with the heading: “Low-cost catalyst helps turn seawater into fuel at scale.” To continue reading, follow the link https://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2020-07/uor-lch071520.php
July 07, 2020
The group got awarded a grant by the American Chemical Society – Petroleum Research Fund for our work on novel methods of synthesizing tandem catalysts.
July 07, 2020
Congratulations to Mitch, Madeline and Prof. Porosoff on the just accepted Energy & Environmental Science manuscript: Assessing the viability of K-Mo2C for reverse water-gas shift scaleup: Molecular to laboratory to pilot scale. For now, the manuscript can be cited as Energy & Environmental Science, 2020, DOI: 10.1039/D0EE01457E.
May 2020
Congratulations to Aime Laurent Twizerimana and Madeline Vonglis on the successful completion of their undergraduate degree in Chemical engineering!
July 2019
February 13, 2019
Congratulations to Zhiqiang on his publication in ACS Catalysis! This marks the group’s first publication!
The paper is entitled “Development of Tandem Catalysts for CO2 Hydrogenation to Olefins” can be found here