Abstract: Selective oxidation reactions, especially using O2 or H2O2, are important to the production of many commodity oxygenates. Simultaneously, selective oxidation is at the core of several ‘holy-grail’ reactions that have vigorously resisted commercialization or breakthroughs in reactivity. These latter include direct methane to methanol, oxidative dehydrogenation of ethane/propane, oxidative coupling of methane, or epoxidation of olefins (beyond ethylene) with O2. Beyond those constraints imposed by thermodynamics, challenges lie in the complex structures of many of the (mixed) oxides used or proposed in these reactions. This leads to challenges in fully describing or quantifying the catalytic structures involved, which in turn can make it challenging to model these sites. Furthermore, there can be limited avenues to rationally tune the active site and, especially, the region around the active site. This talk will address strategies my group has developed for assessing controlling oxide active sites, for controlling nanostructures near active sites, and for building new process concepts, which are then used to tune reactivity in some of the headline reactions.
Bio: Justin Notestein has been a professor of chemical and biological engineering at Northwestern for 18 years, and he is currently the chair of the department. He has advised approximately 50 graduate students and postdocs and authored over 150 articles and patents in the area of catalysis, and especially the development of new heterogeneous catalysts. Funding has been derived from industry-funded consortia, NSF and DOE centers, in which he plays leading roles. He is the current director of the Center for Catalysis and Surface Science, a multidisciplinary catalysis center at Northwestern with over 75 years of history. He has been recognized with several teaching and mentoring awards including the Meshii award for excellence in design education.