Power-to-X: Enabling electrochemical routes of our most coveted chemicals

Energy Futures Lab hosts a seminar from Dr Ifan Stephens of the Department of Materials on enabling electrochemical routes to our most coveted chemicals.

Abstract

Our most commonly produced chemicals, such as ammonia, carbon monoxide or hydrogen peroxide are currently produced in large-scale centralised plants. The transport of these reactive chemicals to the point of consumption poses significant safety and logistical challenges.

However, with the advent of inexpensive renewable electricity, electrochemistry routes of synthesising these chemicals are becoming increasingly attractive. Low temperature electrochemical devices are particularly amenable towards coupling with renewables. They require little infrastructure; as such, they could allow localised chemical production at the point-of-consumption.

Dr Stephens will present his research on the electrocatalysis of (i) CO2 electroreduction to CO, ethylene and ethanol (ii) oxygen reduction to hydrogen peroxide and (iii) dinitrogen reduction to ammonia. He will explain the fundamental bottlenecks we face in enabling the large-scale uptake of these technologies, along with a perspective on how we can solve these challenges.

Biography

Ifan Stephens was appointed as Senior Lecturer at the Department of Materials at Imperial College in July 2017. Prior to Imperial, he was at the Department of Physics at the Technical University of Denmark (DTU); he was first employed as a postdoctoral researcher, then as Assistant Professor and finally as Associate Professor and leader of the Electrocatalysis Group there.

In 2015, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) appointed Ifan as the Peabody Visiting Associate Professor. He taught and conducted research at the Department of Mechanical Engineering at MIT for a whole semester.

Ifan’s research aims to enable the large-scale electrochemical conversion of renewable energy to fuels and valuable chemicals and vice versa. Such processes will be critical in order to allow the increased uptake of renewable energy.

Ifan has discovered or co-discovered several new catalysts for the oxygen reduction reaction, which exhibited significant improvements in performance over the prior state-of-the-art. In particular, the research he lead on hydrogen peroxide production resulted to the establishment of the spinout company, HP Now.

Venue

The talk will be held in Room 611 of Electrical and Electronic Engineering (building 16 On the campus map). The room is known as the Gabor Suite.

If you are entering the building from Dalby Court/through the building’s main entrance take the lift to the sixth floor, turn right through the double doors and it is near the end on your left hand side.