Electro-catalysis for Advanced Fuel Cells and Hydrogen Production from Seawater Electrolyser

 

Electro-catalysis for Advanced Fuel Cells and Hydrogen Production from Seawater Electrolyser

 

Date: 19^th November, 2024 (Tuesday)

Time: 2:30 - 3:30 pm (HKT)

 

Venue: Conference Room 412, Hui Oi Chow Science Building

 

Prof. Wen-Feng LIN

Loughborough University

 

Prof. Wen-Feng Lin is the University Special Envoy for East Asia, Professor of Chemical Engineering and Departmental Director of Research at Loughborough University, UK. He is a Fellow of the UK Royal Society of Chemistry (FRSC), and a Fellow and Board member of British Council of the International Association of Advanced Materials (FIAAM, Sweden). He has expertise in low-cost Green Hydrogen production from Seawater, Fuel Cells, Clean Energy from Renewable Resources, Chemistry and Chemical Engineering (Physical Chemistry, Electrochemistry, Electrocatalysis and Electrochemical Engineering).

 

The primary themes of his research are related to clean energy, environment, and sustainability. He collaborates internationally and has led a significant number of externally (EPSRC, industry, RS etc) funded projects, ranging from fundamental understanding of seawater splitting electro-catalysis at atomic and molecular levels to applied R&D in sustainable energy materials, net zero green hydrogen production from seawater electrolysis using renewable resources, fuel cells, batteries, and ozone generation from water for water treatment and advanced oxidation technologies. He has an output of over 200 publications, 6 patents and contributions to 2 spinouts. Some recent papers are published in Nature Energy, Chem. Soc. Rev., Joule, Energy Environ. Sci., JACS, PNAS, Angew. Chem. Int. Ed., Chem., ACS Catalysis, Applied Catalysis B: Environmental, ACS Energy Lett., Advanced Energy Materials, ACS Appl. Mater. & Interfaces, Nano Energy, Electrochemical Energy Reviews, and Chemical Engineering Journal.

 

After obtaining his BSc in chemistry, MSc in physical chemistry and PhD in electro-chemistry, from Xiamen University, he was appointed as a Lecturer then an Associate Professor at the same University, before embarking on his true international academic adventure. He was a Senior Visiting Scholar at Hong Kong University and Case Western Reserve University; held two prestigious Research Fellowships awarded by the Humboldt-Foundation and Max-Planck-Society, working with Nobel Laureate Prof. Ertl in the Fritz-Haber-Institute in Berlin, Germany. In the UK, he was a Research Fellow (funded by EPSRC), Visiting Lecturer, Senior Research Fellow, and a Founding Director of two spinouts at Newcastle University (1999-2008); and was a Lecturer (2009-2012) and Reader/Research Professor (2013-2015) at Queen’s University Belfast (QUB). He joined Loughborough University in December 2015, taking up the post of Professor of Chemical Engineering, and was appointed as the Director of Research for the Department of Chemical Engineering in 2019, and University/VC Special Envoy for East Asia in 2023. He holds 5 Visiting Professorships at five leading universities in China as well as a Visiting Research Professor title from QUB.

 

Electro-catalysis plays key roles in electrochemical energy conversion technologies such as fuel cells and seawater electrolysis for green hydrogen production. Advanced liquid fuel cells such as direct alcohol (methanol, ethanol, etc.) fuel cells have been regarded as a promising alternative for the power supply for portable and automotive applications thanks to their simplicity of using directly liquid fuels in the feed. The fundamental key challenge in the advanced direct fuel cell and seawater electrolysis is to rationally design efficient, stable and low-cost catalyst and electrode materials. An insight into the structure-reactivity and structure-selectivity relationships is the prerequisite to the effective design of the desirable high-performance electrocatalysts. In this talk, recent progress on the development of low-cost electrocatalysts for both advanced direct liquid fuel cells and seawater electrolysis for green hydrogen production will be reported. Fundamental studies have been performed, employing combined electrochemical in-situ FTIR spectroscopy and density functional theory atomistic modeling, to understand the reaction mechanism and structure-reactivity relationships of a series of low-cost model and practical nano-catalysts, unsupported and supported on various substrates such as oxides and carbides. The effects of supports and electrode structures on catalyst layers towards liquid fuel oxidation and seawater splitting reactions (hydrogen evolution reaction and oxygen evolution reaction) have been demonstrated, and mechanisms understood.