Abstract: The current atmospheric CO₂ level reaches 426 ppm according to the latest measurement by NASA in July 2024; therefore, the development of carbon capture, utilization, and storage technologies (CCUS) has become urgent to cut CO₂ emissions to avoid the most severe consequences of climate change. CO₂ conversion to commodity chemicals, materials, feedstocks, and fuels driven by renewable electricity offers one of the most effective pathways to mitigate the greenhouse effect and reduce global demand for traditional fossil fuels, while simultaneously achieving sustainable energy and carbon neutrality. 

This seminar will briefly overview diverse research areas of National Energy Technology Laboratory (NETL) to advance energy and environmental sustainability along with carbon management. Our electrochemistry efforts on carbon conversion directly support the US goal of achieving carbon-free power sector by 2035 and net zero emissions by 2050. Since CO₂ electroreduction is highly structure sensitive, NETL ongoing research has been focused on the rational design and engineering of electrocatalysts, i.e. tuning the particle size, shape, dimension, or manipulating chemical composition, surface structure, defects, etc., to facilitate the CO₂ conversion to desirable products with good selectivity, activity, and durability. Different classes and types of electrocatalytic materials will be covered in this talk, from well-defined atomic-scale model catalysts to heterogenous, scalable powder systems at nano- and micro-scale for “real world” performance evaluation. Several ex situ and in situ spectroscopic, microscopic, and electrochemical characterization techniques along with computational findings will be additionally discussed to gain more insights into the structure-activity relation. 

Besides catalyst development, the intensive efforts have been devoted to optimizing the device architecture and membrane electrode assembly components of CO₂ electrolysis cell to better respond to practical industrial applications (current density higher than 200 mA/cm² and lifetime beyond 1,000 hours). The last part of this seminar will provide more detail on how NETL has transitioned from the most common aqueous H-type reactor for lab-scale validation to more realistic full electrolyzer cell in bench-scale prototype. The knowledge, electrocatalytic materials, and device validation achieved from NETL in-house research will be translated to industrial sector for large scale deployment and the anticipated outcome will help advance the development of low temperature CO₂ electrolysis technologies.

Bio: Dr. Thuy Duong Nguyen Phan is currently a Research Scientist at the U.S Department of Energy’s National Energy Technology Laboratory (NETL). Her research interests focus on functional materials for energy conversion (carbon capture and conversion, renewable chemicals/fuel production, hydrogen production/utilization), energy storage (battery, supercapacitor, oxygen storage), and environmental sustainability (wastewater/air/metal purification, indoor odor removal, self-cleaning window). She earned her Ph.D. in Chemical Engineering from University of Ulsan (South Korea) in 2010 and then worked there as Postdoctoral Research Fellow and Research Professor. Prior to working at NETL in 2017, she worked as Research Associate at Brookhaven National Laboratory. She has strong track record of 50+ high impact journal publications and 7 patent awards/pending applications (Google scholar).