Adam Holewinski receives Fulbright to synthesize renewable fuels and chemicals

Anonymous — Tue, 11 Apr 2023 18:40:04 +0000

Adam Holewinski receives Fulbright to synthesize renewable fuels and chemicals Anonymous (not verified) Tue, 04/11/2023 - 12:40

Adam Holewinski, an assistant professor of chemical and biological engineering, has been awarded a prestigious fellowship to research efficient ways to produce sustainable chemical products and fuels using electricity from renewable sources like solar and wind.

Beginning in late August, Holewinski will spend five months as a 2023 Fulbright Scholar at the Technical University of Denmark (DTU), conducting research, advising graduate students and giving research talks at various universities in Denmark. Holewinski also hopes to establish ongoing collaborations between CU ��Ĵ�ý and DTU, and possibly with other Danish institutions, including student exchanges.

“It’s a new experience, both professionally getting to explore some new research avenues and personally getting to spend five months in Europe,” Holewinski said. “I haven’t been out of the country much, so I am looking forward to it.”

The Fulbright U.S. Scholar Program offers opportunities to teach, research and conduct professional projects in more than 135 countries and to expand American partnerships and share knowledge. Recipients are selected on the basis of academic and professional achievement, as well as a demonstrated leadership in their field.

A wide array of new opportunities

For Holewinski, the Fulbright award is an opportunity to advance the work of the Holewinski Research Group, which focuses on “efficient, renewable and environmentally benign catalytic processes for the production of energy, as well as commodity and fine chemicals.”

Producing chemical products like fuels, plastics and fertilizers very often requires a catalyst, a substance that speeds up chemical reactions and reduces the amount of energy used to drive the reaction. Usually this energy comes from heat derived from burning fossil fuels, but Holewinski’s research involves using electricity from renewable sources.

His research also involves designing new catalysts to convert renewable carbon sources such as sugars from biomass (e.g., plants or algae) into fuels that could replace fossil fuels and reduce harmful emissions. These renewable carbon sources can also be converted (using new catalysts) to create the organic building blocks needed to make sustainable, recyclable plastics.

Holewinski said that combining renewable electricity, catalysis and sustainable raw materials such as bio-carbon "introduces a wide array of new opportunities." For example, one common area of electro-catalysis research relates to splitting water into hydrogen and oxygen gases. Hoelwisnski said that it is theoretically possible to swap out the oxygen-producing reaction with something that generates other useful chemicals as reactions that produce each gas occur in separate compartments of an electrochemical cell.

"Hydrogen is valuable, as it can be used as a 'clean' fuel, but there is not a commensurate need for synthetic oxygen," Holewinski said.

His research involves developing the right catalyst to replace the reaction that makes oxygen with one that makes a high-value chemical, such as plant-based building blocks for plastics. Another research direction involves “rewiring” the oxidation catalyst to turn water into hydrogen peroxide, which is later used in a variety of chemical syntheses, as well as for water treatment and bleaching in the pulp and paper industry.

Overall, Holewinski says his research could lead to a decrease in emissions during the manufacturing of chemical products. The more efficiently it can be done with less infrastructure, such as requiring fewer solar panels to create the electricity, the closer his research will be to competitively creating alternatives to fossil fuels.

But, he says, his research is a long way from producing results that would improve the life of the average person.

“It would be very unrealistic to say I am going to go somewhere for five months and come out with a commercial product that will change the world,” Holewinski said. “The realistic hope is that we can bring some new methods and techniques to my research group so we can elevate the work we are doing.”

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High-Sensitivity Low-Energy Ion Scattering Spectrometer will be a transformative resource for materials research at CU ��Ĵ�ý

Anonymous — Fri, 01 Apr 2022 06:00:00 +0000

High-Sensitivity Low-Energy Ion Scattering Spectrometer will be a transformative resource for materials research at CU ��Ĵ�ý Anonymous (not verified) Fri, 04/01/2022 - 00:00

Jonathan Raab

The HS-LEIS system in the SEEL building on East Campus.

CU ��Ĵ�ý’s East Campus is now home to the High-Sensitivity Low-Energy Ion Scattering (HS-LEIS) Spectrometer, a tool researchers from across the Rocky Mountain region will use for advanced materials characterization and analysis.

Because materials interact with the environment through their surfaces, knowledge of surface properties is critical to understanding structure-function relationships of existing and bespoke, next-generation materials designed for a variety of electronic, optical, biological, chemical and other applications, including functional coatings, photovoltaics, catalysis and more.

Housed in the Sustainability, Energy and Environment Laboratory building on East Campus, the HS-LEIS is the culmination of recent advances in detector design for surface analysis. The device can provide the most sensitive and selective methods for non-destructive, property-dictating, top-atomic-layer surface composition analysis.

“Coupled to this dual instrument system are several sample environments, such that one can expose materials to reactive atmospheres, high temperatures, electrochemical potential and other environments to examine their effect on the surfaces,” said Assistant Professor Adam Holewinski, the lead principal investigator of a team of five researchers who submitted the proposal to bring the instrument to CU ��Ĵ�ý. “This has turned into a rather unique, customized surface analysis platform with broad applicability.”

The HS-LEIS is currently the only device of its kind in the Rocky Mountain region, and only the second in the U.S. It is also unique in that it is complimented by an X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy system, to which it is physically tethered to perform sequential analysis on samples, as well as its unique complement of electrochemical cells. The platform also allows for interfaces with a glass reaction chamber that can reach temperatures up to 1200 degrees Celsius and handle corrosive and reactive gases.

Massimo Ruzzene, the associate dean for research in the College of Engineering and Applied Science, said materials research is and continues to be a strength of our college and the university as a whole.

“This instrument will be a new cornerstone in that area and my hope is it will spur exciting interdisciplinary research efforts on campus and in the region for years to come,” he said.

The acquisition of the HS-LEIS was made possible through a collaborative effort by a group of materials-focused researchers from the Department of Chemical and Biological Engineering, the Department of Chemistry, the Materials Science and Engineering Program and the Renewable and Sustainable Energy Institute. In 2019, co-principal investigators Tanja Cuk, Steve George, Adam Holewinski, Mike McGehee and Will Medlin developed a proposal that they submitted to the National Science Foundation, which ultimately funded the creation of the platform.

The HS-LEIS will be accessible to CU ��Ĵ�ý researchers and those in academia and industry. For more information, please contact Adam Holewinski.

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Adam Holewinski News

Adam Holewinski receives Fulbright to synthesize renewable fuels and chemicals

A wide array of new opportunities

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High-Sensitivity Low-Energy Ion Scattering Spectrometer will be a transformative resource for materials research at CU ���Ĵ�ý

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High-Sensitivity Low-Energy Ion Scattering Spectrometer will be a transformative resource for materials research at CU ��Ĵ�ý