IMRI Receives DOE Reseach Project from the Office of Fossil Energy

Congratulations to Dr. Xiao-Dong Zhou, Director and Professor for the Institute for Materials Research and Innovation (IMRI) and Dr. Dilip Depan, Assistant Professor in Chemical Engineering and the additional team of researchers on receiving a U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) research project from the Office of Fossil Energy (FE) for $1,250,097.

The project entitled High-Efficiency Electrochemical Conversion of CO2 to Ethylene seeks to develop a catalytic, pulsed electrolysis technology for the conversion of CO2 to value-added ethylene. When coupled with low-carbon electricity, the proposed technology could reduce CO2 emissions by 200 percent when compared to steam cracking, which is the current primary ethylene production method.

The project entails three IMRI assistant professors, Dr. Dilip Depan (Chemical Engineering), Dr. Tolga Karsili (Chemistry), and Dr. Yu Wang (Chemistry), as well as Professor Jingjie Wu from the University of Cincinnati. 
Eleven projects nationwide have been selected to receive approximately $17 million in federal funding for cost-shared research and development projects for carbon utilization. The projects will develop and test technologies that can utilize carbon dioxide (CO2) from power systems or other industrial sources as the primary feedstock. The research goal of DOE’s Carbon Utilization Program is to reduce emissions and transform waste carbon streams into value-added products.

Projects resulting from this FOA will validate the concept, estimate the technology cost, and demonstrate that the carbon lifecycle of the products offers a path toward an environmentally sustainable and economically viable product.
The National Energy Technology Laboratory (NETL) will manage the selected projects.

Click here for the full article on DOE’s website.