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our guest speaker will be
Andrew Bocarsly, PhD
Princeton University
Department of Chemistry
“Chemistry and Climate
Change Solutions:
The Visible Light Driven
Conversion Of Carbon Dioxide"
Date: Wednesday,
June 16, 2010
Lecture at 6:00 p.m.
Friend Center Room 108
Princeton University*
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Driving Directions
Abstract
Concerns about the environmental impact
of rising atmospheric CO2 concentrations have led to a
variety of carbon mitigation strategies including
sequestration and chemical conversion. We have proposed the
synthesis of simple alcohols as a target for a chemical
carbon mitigation strategy. These species could be utilized
as organic building blocks for the synthesis of soft
materials, or used as liquid fuels. Here we discuss the
pyridinium catalyzed electrochemical reduction of CO2 at
illuminated semiconductor electrodes to form methanol using
light energy. Our electroanalytical evaluation of this
reaction has identified three separate catalytic processes:
the reduction of CO2 to formic acid, the reduction of formic
acid to formaldehyde, and the reduction of formaldehyde to
methanol. In each case pyridinium is found to act as an
efficient electrocatalyst. We find that specific
substitutions of the pyridine ring can switch the reduction
product at illuminated p-GaP and p-GaInP2 electrodes from
methanol to propanol. The ratio of methanol to propanol
depends both on the aromatic amine catalyst employed, and
the composition of the cathode. Based on these findings, we
believe that it is possible to directly convert CO2 into
energy dense liquid fuels, and that in the future this will
be doable using sunlight.
Biography
Andrew Bocarsly received his Bachelor
of Science degree jointly in chemistry and physics from UCLA
in 1976, and his Ph.D. in chemistry from M.I.T. in 1980. He
has been a member of the Princeton University, Chemistry
Department faculty for thirty years. Professor Bocarsly has
published over 175 papers in peer reviewed journals and
co-authored six patents. Research in his laboratory is
focused on the materials chemistry
associated with elevated temperature
proton exchange membrane fuel cells, including composite
membranes for elevated temperature cells and
electrocatalysts for direct alcohol fuel cells; visible
light photoelectrochemistry for the conversion of carbon
dioxide to alcohols; cyanogel sol-gel processing routes to
refractory metal alloys and nanostructures; and
molecule-based multielectron photoinduced charge transfer
processes.
Professor Bocarsly serves as a
consultant and contractor to various fuel cell and alternate
energy companies. He is a founder and President of the
Science Advisory Board for Liquid Light Inc., a company
formed to commercialize the formation of organic commodity
chemicals from carbon dioxide using alternate energy
sources. Professor Bocarsly has received an Alfred P. Sloan
Fellowship, the Sigma Xi (Princeton Section) Science
Educator Award, the American Chemical Society-Exxon Solid
State Chemistry award, and has served as the
electrochemistry editor for Methods in Materials Research: A
Current Protocols Publication. Presently, he is serving as a
volume editor for Structure and Bonding in the area of fuel
cells and batteries.
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