Abstract:
Reducing carbon dioxide emissions by turning them into useful products is one of the projects at Oak Ridge National Laboratory that could make a significant contribution to helping close the carbon cycle. I will speak on our work in designing catalysts to increase the yields from the conversion of CO2 into useful feedstock chemicals and fuels such as methanol. 

Reactions of hydrogen with CO2 to make methanol (CH3OH) and other alcohols, platform molecules that can be directly used as fuels or further converted to other useful chemicals, are typically catalyzed by supported metal nanoparticles (such as copper) that are modified to improve the catalytic performance. In our recent work on CO2 hydrogenation over supported metal catalysts, we have chemically tuned the anionic sites of the support to optimize the catalytic activity, selectivity, and stability.   

The American chemical industry relies heavily on the burning of fossil fuels to produce heat to drive chemical reactions. The Department of Energy is funding research to find ways to decarbonize the chemical industry by using heat produced by electric currents in resistance circuits, preferably generated by renewable energy sources. The goals of this approach are to significantly reduce both energy consumption and climate-altering greenhouse gas emissions.

I will speak on our work in this area through one of the DOE-funded Energy EarthShot Research Centers (EERC). In 2023 DOE’s Office of Science created 29 centers, 11 at DOE national labs and 18 at universities, to address tough scientific challenges to help humankind achieve net-zero carbon emissions by 2050 (for example, through carbon storage, offshore wind power, and industrial decarbonization). The Energy EarthShot Research Center I help lead as deputy director at ORNL focuses on Non-Equilibrium Energy Transfer for Efficient Reactions (NEETER). Our goal is to find out how to replace steady-state, bulk heating in the chemical industry with electrified processes that deliver localized pulses of heat for efficiently driving catalytic chemical processes.

Bio: 
Dr. Zili Wu is leader of the Surface Chemistry and Catalysis Group in ORNL’s Chemical Science Division, a research & development staff member at the Center for Nanophase Materials Sciences (CNMS) at ORNL, the deputy director of the recently funded DOE Energy EarthShot Research Center (EERC) – Non-equilibrium Energy Transfer for Efficient Reactions (NEETER), and thrust 2 leader in the UNCAGE-ME Center, one of DOE’s Energy Frontier Research Centers.

In 2001 he obtained his Ph.D. in physical chemistry at Dalian Institute of Chemical Physics in China and spent more than three years at Northwestern University as a postdoctoral associate before joining the ORNL staff in 2006. He has extensive experience in heterogeneous catalysis, applied spectroscopy, and nanomaterial synthesis. His research interests lie in the fundamental understanding of catalytic active sites on the surfaces and interfaces involved in heterogeneous catalysis, photocatalysis, and electrocatalysis, establishing structure-catalysis relationships in catalytic solids as a function of time and space, using in situ and operando characterization methods, and fabricating nanomaterials with well-defined structures. 

He is an active member of the American Chemical Society and has organized more than 15 ACS symposia in fundamental catalysis and energy materials. He is the recipient of several recent awards including the 2023 ORNL Outstanding Research Output Team Award, the 2020 ORNL-CNMS Outstanding Science and Technology Accomplishment Award, and the 2019 Excellence in Catalysis Award from the Catalysis Society of Metropolitan New York.