(4fc) Microwave-Assisted Heterogeneous Catalysis for Natural Gas Utilization

Nowadays, natural gas is widely used for combustion to generate heat and electricity. Each natural gas drilling site produces stranded gas, a raw gas mixture of volatile hydrocarbons where the main composition is methane. The producers flare the stranded gas at the site because the cost of collecting and transporting the gas is higher than the value of the gas itself. To reduce the waste of this natural resource, it is worthwhile to utilize the stranded natural gas as feedstock to produce value-added chemicals without emitting greenhouse gas. Methane activation is regarded as the most important and difficult step to produce value-added chemical products such as ethylene, butane, benzene, etc. Currently, most studies rely on noble metal catalysts or specific metal-organic framework (MOF) catalysts. However, the cost of noble metal catalysts is high, and it is comparatively challenging to synthesis MOF catalysts on an industrial scale. Under this area of interest, my research will synergistically incorporate a microwave reactor system or a non-thermal plasma reactor system with nonprecious metal catalysts. My research will focus on the viability of microwave-assisted natural gas upgrading processes and the intrinsic methane conversion mechanism involving electromagnetic radiation.

Research Experience:

My Ph.D. research in Dr. Jianli Hu’s group at West Virginia University focuses on microwave-assisted natural gas conversion to value-added chemicals. As a Ph.D. student of a new faculty, I have experienced the entire start-up process of the laboratory and research programs build-up. My first research contribution was to collaborate with a post-doctoral researcher to investigate ethane dehydroaromatization (DHA) in a traditional fixed-bed reactor using various ZSM-5 zeolite catalysts. To address the catalyst deactivation in DHA, I further designed a cyclic regeneration process and discovered that using diluted air and lower regeneration temperature can partly reverse the catalyst deactivation. By applying microwave radiation, the ethane conversion with the molybdenum-based catalyst at low temperature can be significantly improved, and discovered that there is a significant difference in product selectivity between traditional fixed-bed reactor and microwave reactor. A similar trend was observed in direct methane conversion process using molybdenum catalyst and microwave-sensitive iron-based catalysts. Currently, I use finite-element method to study the interaction between electromagnetic waves and dielectric catalyst material, which illustrates the thermal and non-thermal effects brought by the microwave radiation and how they affect the methane activation process.

Teaching Interests:

My teaching interests include kinetics and reaction engineering courses at both undergraduate and graduate levels, which naturally fit my research experience and interests. Meanwhile, I would also like to teach fundamental chemical engineering courses such as thermodynamics. I would like to develop electives that focus on heterogeneous catalysis, natural gas utilization, and scientific statistical data analysis. During my undergraduate study, I have been the undergraduate teaching assistant for reaction engineering course (>100 students), and I achieved an excellent performance appraisal from both students and the instructor. I have also mentored undergraduate students and other junior master/Ph.D. students in my Ph.D. research, as evidenced by collaborative publications.