Congratulations to Dr. Angela Melcherts on a successful PhD defense, during which she defended her PhD thesis, supervised by Prof. Bert Weckhuysen, Dr. Ward van der Stam, and Dr. Matteo Monai.

In her PhD thesis, Angela addressed major challenges related to the energy, resources, and materials transitions needed to reach the sustainability goals of 2050. Her work focused on using CO₂ as a carbon feedstock for producing fuels, chemicals, and materials, rather than merely reducing emissions.

Angela examined the hydrogenation of CO₂ to methane (synthetic natural gas) over nickel metal nanoparticles supported on various metal oxides as catalyst materials. Through spectroscopic and microscopic techniques, she investigated the interaction between molecules and both the nickel metal nanoparticles and metal oxide support materials to improve catalyst performance. Infrared light spectroscopy proved particularly powerful for following intermediate steps of the chemical reaction and discovering structure-composition-performance relationships.

Angela demonstrated that by changing the support material, the reaction mechanism on the catalyst surface can be modified, resulting in different activities and selectivities. Using titanium dioxide as a support, she showed that catalyst performance depends on different crystal structures and reduction temperatures during pretreatment.

Finally, Angela described how nickel-based catalysts can produce CH₄ at high conversion levels and how this can be coupled with other systems, such as the methane to aromatics reaction, to produce valuable chemical building blocks like benzene and toluene. Her work highlights the promise of catalysis to mitigate CO₂ emissions from industrial point sources, contributing toward reaching sustainability goals.

Joyc’s full thesis can be read here.