Operando Spectroscopy of Heterogeneous Catalysts to Make Fuelsand Chemicals from Renewable Resources by Prof. Bert M. Weckhuysen
Professor, Bert M. Weckhuysen, Utrecht University，a Distinquished University Professor at Utrecht University (The Netherlands), received his Master and PhD degrees from Leuven University (Belgium) in 1991 and 1995. He has worked as a postdoctoral fellow at Lehigh University (USA) and Texas A&M University (USA). He has (co-) authored more than 750 scientific journal publications and has received many scientific awards. including the Roval Dutch Chemical Societv Gold Medal, Netherlands Catalysis and Chemistry Award. Paul H. Emmett Award in Fundamental Catalysis, International Catalysis Award, Bourke Award from the Roval Society of Chemistry, Spinoza Award from the Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research, Kozo Tanabe Prize for Acid-Base Catalysis, Chemistry Europe Award, Karl Wamsler Innovation Award as well as the Michel Boudart Award for the Advancement of Catalysis. He is a Knight in the Order of the Netherlands Lion, and an elected member of a.o., the Royal Dutch Academy of Sciences (KNAW), the Roval Flemish Academy of Belaium for Sciences and Arts (KvAB). and the European Academy of Sciences. The group aims to build a powerful "camera" to record what actually happens in a working catalytic solid under relevant reaction conditions. The aim of this work is to bring the necessary science and technology to a level that enables imaging catalytic processes at macro, meso and micro scales, from the reactor down to interactions between atoms and molecules. This approach allows to unravel the activation and deactivation mechanisms of various catalytic processes, of relevance to make the fuels and chemicals from renewable resources, including CO2, biomass and plastic waste.
Date & Time: Friday, November 28, 2025, 10:00 - 11:00 AM
Venue: Yifu Building Lecture Hall
Language: English
As we enter the era of catalytic activation of small molecules sl1ch as CO2, to ralize the refinery of the future one of the main questions to answer for scientists involve the coupling of carbon fragments, originating from CO2, either produced at point sources, or harvested from-instead of making them from crude oil fractions. This requires a profound knowledge of the chemical processes taking place at the catalytic surface of both thermo- and electrocatalytic activation processes of CO2, was well as of the subsequent chemical conversion processes in which carbon monoxide (Fischer-Tropsch synthesis), methane (via C-H activation to make e.g. olefins and aromaticcs) and methanol (methanol-to-hydrocarbons process) are used. This is the topic of this lecture, in which the latest progress made in our research group will be discussed in understanding CO2 activation over nickel (thermocatalytic conversion) as well as copper (electrocatalytic conversion), and the subsequent conversion processes of the reaction products to make fuels and chemicals, including long-chain hydrocarbons, methanol and aromatics, thereby making use of combination catalysts as well as processes. Special emphasis is on the use of operando spectroscopy methods to elucidate reaction and deactivation mechanisms. The last part of the talk will be focused on alternative resources, namely plastic waste, thereby illustrating the issue of mass transfer processes, as well as the role of active sites embedded at the outer surface of solid catalysts, to ensure for example pre-cracking of the large hydrocarbon molecules. The focus here will be on the use of fluid catalytic cracking (FCC) technology to convert plastic waste into base chemicals, as well as on the characterization of surface acid sites at the outer surface, and their role in the cracking of long-chain hydrocarbons, and other parameters to describe the behavior of FCC technology ti convert plastic waste into fuels and chemicals.