Thank you to our members for attending our annual spring symposium!
From Water to Waveforms: Programming the Catalyst Environment
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Prof. Lars Grabow (University of Houston)
This lecture will highlight my group’s efforts to improve catalytic performance not by changing catalyst composition, but by engineering the catalyst’s working environment. A central theme is that the local environment at metal-support interfaces can directly control elementary reaction steps. In Au/TiO₂, we showed that water and surface hydroxyls promote O₂ activation during CO oxidation by supplying protons, while inhibiting heterolytic H₂ activation by altering charge transfer across the interface. On Ru/TiO₂, water likewise tunes selectivity during hydrodeoxygenation of phenolic compounds by modifying the acid/base character of interfacial sites involved in C–O bond cleavage. More recently, we have extended these ideas to hydrogen spillover, showing that it can be entropy-driven and proceed through proton-coupled electron transfer. Together, these studies point to a broader mechanistic framework in which the catalyst environment, rather than catalyst composition alone, determines reactivity.
Building on these insights, we are now investigating how catalytic performance can be improved through dynamic operation and programmable external stimuli. Using detailed kinetic and reactor models, we show that forced oscillations in feed composition can transiently create optimal surface conditions, suppress poisoning, and enhance rate or selectivity beyond steady-state limits. In parallel, catalytic condensers offer a route to periodically modulate catalyst electron density and surface binding energies, potentially relaxing the traditional Sabatier constraint. Light provides a further handle for controlling catalyst function, for example, photon-driven CO desorption on Pt catalysts provides a handle to limit CO poisoning through photonic stimulation. Overall, the talk presents a broader view of catalyst optimization in which the chemical, electrical, photonic, and temporal environment of a catalyst can be deliberately programmed to achieve maximum performance.
Building on these insights, we are now investigating how catalytic performance can be improved through dynamic operation and programmable external stimuli. Using detailed kinetic and reactor models, we show that forced oscillations in feed composition can transiently create optimal surface conditions, suppress poisoning, and enhance rate or selectivity beyond steady-state limits. In parallel, catalytic condensers offer a route to periodically modulate catalyst electron density and surface binding energies, potentially relaxing the traditional Sabatier constraint. Light provides a further handle for controlling catalyst function, for example, photon-driven CO desorption on Pt catalysts provides a handle to limit CO poisoning through photonic stimulation. Overall, the talk presents a broader view of catalyst optimization in which the chemical, electrical, photonic, and temporal environment of a catalyst can be deliberately programmed to achieve maximum performance.
In memoriam
John Byrne
John Byrne, a long serving director and treasurer for the NYCS, sadly passed away on August 10, 2022. John’s wife, Susan, suggested that because of John’s dedication and love for NYCS, that it would be fitting that if friends and colleagues wanted to make a donation in John’s name, one favorite cause of John’s would be to support the NYCS work.
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Who we are
The Catalysis Society of Metropolitan New York (CSNY) is a non-profit organization founded in 1958 to promote and encourage the growth and development of the science of catalysis in the New Jersey and Metro New York areas. CSNY is a local chapter of the North American Catalysis Society (NACS).
We organize 7 monthly professional dinner seminar meetings of scientists - to report, discuss, and exchange information and viewpoints in the field of catalysis. We also organize an all-day Annual Symposium in the spring which features lectures from distinguished researchers and a poster session presented by university students working in the catalysis area.
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