Fleur Neijenhuis
We are confronting with climate change and ways to abate this is to explore alternative resources for the production of fuels and chemicals. A way to do this is by taking water to make hydrogen and CO2 from point sources or via Direct Air Capture to make syngas. This syngas can be converted further into fuels and chemicals. This involves three processes, namely water electrolysis, the reverse Water-Gas Shift (rWGS) and Fischer-Tropsch synthesis (FTS). This project aims to investigate the role of impurities and intermittent on the dynamics of the active phases during the rWGS and FTS, as will be observed with spectroscopic- and microscopic methods. The relative dependency of the three processes, namely water electrolysis, rWGS and FTS, will be investigated by exploring different catalyst combinations, thereby exposing them to different gas compositions and the additions of potential contaminants. The PhD work will be predominantly experimental in nature, thereby focusing on catalyst synthesis, characterization and testing.