The work also promises to help hone research skills among as many as eight NIU graduate and undergraduate students.
The first project aims to develop an improved, cost effective and environmentally sound way to transform chemical compounds found in natural gas into other forms of petrochemical products.
The chemical compounds of interest are known as light alkanes, which are major components of fuels such as methane, propane, gasoline and diesel and are important raw materials in the chemical industry.
The low cost and increased supply of natural gas and natural gas liquids provides an opportunity to discover and develop new catalysts and processes to enable the direct conversion of natural gas and natural gas liquids into value-added chemicals with a lower carbon footprint, according to the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine. Value-added chemicals would represent a higher-economic-value use of shale gas compared with its use as a fuel.
NIU Professor Tao Li
“The transformation of cheap and abundant light alkanes from natural gas could have far-reaching implications on the chemical and energy sectors,” said Li, who holds a joint appointment with the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Argonne National Laboratory.
Li’s project will investigate and elucidate the use of intermetallic compounds as transformation catalysts. “We’ve designed this catalyst to accomplish the same things as more costly high-temperature catalysts,” he said. “My focus is to try to understand what happens during the chemical reaction, and why this catalyst is superior to the one that’s commonly used.”
The research will be carried out through X-ray characterizations at Argonne’s Advanced Photon Source, one of the most powerful X-ray facilities in the world. Li will involve one NIU graduate student and two to three undergraduates in the project, with an emphasis on recruitment of students from underrepresented groups.
“I hope to have at least one Research Rookie involved,” said Li, who had four Research Rookies working with him last year.
The second NSF-supported project will work toward development of the high-energy density and low-cost sodium-sulfur battery technology. The work will yield new methods and chemistry understanding to enable the use of this battery system in applications requiring more durability and lower-cost, including electric vehicles and grid-scale energy storage for renewable energy generation.
One graduate student and two to three undergraduates will receive research and industry training through the project, with students from underrepresented groups to be recruited for participation. Li will collaborate with scientists at Argonne’s Advanced Photon Source for in situ X-ray characterization studies and hands-on student training.
Li was recognized earlier this year with an Emerging Researcher Award from the American Chemical Society and a Vebleo Fellowship. He now has a total of four concurrent research projects underway at NIU. Last year, NSF awarded Li with a grant of $271,000 over three years to characterize the transport property and microstructure of battery electrolytes. Li also is a co-principal investigator on a DOE grant to Argonne National Laboratory for the study of solid-state electrolytes in lithium batteries.
