Cargnello Group Spotlight: Next-Generation Catalytic Materials and Processes for Sustainable Energy
The Cargnello group is working in several areas related to sustainable processes and renewable energy through catalysis and reaction engineering. The Cargnello group is led by Matteo Cargnello who was recently promoted to Associate Professor with tenure.
Sustainability and chemical engineering
Sustainability is becoming a very popular word these days, but it has been a concept that chemical engineers have embraced for a long time. Already in 1987, reports from the United Nations defined sustainable development as "development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs".
Chemical engineers use sustainability principles in a variety of applications and areas: in providing clean water and sanitation, in promoting sustainable agriculture and food production, in devising ways to deliver affordable and clean energy, in designing processes for sustainable cities, in designing chemical processes for the production or recycling of chemicals that reduce greenhouse gas emissions, among many others. It is the mission of chemical engineers to include sustainability principles in the design of chemical processes at all scales.
Departmental focus
Our department is focused on sustainability principles in the areas of renewable energy, greenhouse gas reduction, food production, advanced manufacturing, recovery of valuable chemicals from wastewater, and combating climate change. For example, students, post-docs, and faculty in our department are researching ways to integrate renewable, carbon-free electricity in processes for the large-scale production of chemicals, such as ammonia, syngas, and ethylene, and in the conversion of CO2 to important carbon-containing chemicals.
The future of sustainability with the Cargnello group
The Cargnello group is highly motivated by reducing carbon emissions and removing greenhouse gases from the atmosphere using several approaches. They are working on sucking CO2 from the atmosphere using adsorbent materials and electrochemical processes to concentrate CO2 into pure form or in the form of inert carbon materials. They are also involved in studying processes to convert the captured CO2 together with carbon-free hydrogen into important chemicals, such as ethanol, that can reduce overall emissions and decrease our dependency on fossil fuels.
Sustainable processes for the production of large-scale chemicals, such as ammonia, are being investigated with the opportunity to use renewable energy to drive electrocatalysts rather than fossil fuels that emit CO2. The conversion of waste plastics into commodity chemicals is another area of interest in reducing plastic pollution while producing critical chemicals that are necessary in many industrial processes. All these projects rely on the fundamental understanding of catalytic materials and processes and in their engineering at the molecular level to extract principles that can be applied to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and improve the performance of sustainable processes.
The future of greenhouse gases
A chemical engineer explains why he thinks a better approach to greenhouse gases in the sky is to turn them into other chemicals.
