My passion for environmental preservation and education has influenced my decision to pursue a PhD. My research focuses on sustainable processes that promote zero waste and utilise renewable energy.
Project title: Designing catalysts for the electrochemical C-N coupling reactions.
Addressing global climate change necessitates an urgent shift in technology, focusing on decreasing the carbon emissions of hard-to-abate industries like fertiliser and plastic manufacturing. A promising avenue for deep-rooted decarbonisation is electrochemical CO2 reduction (CO2RR), which utilises renewable energy to transform anthropogenic emissions of CO2 into value-added chemical products. Moreover, CO2 has the potential to undergo conversion into valuable organonitrogen products like urea, amides, and amines through C-N bonds formation with readily available N2 or small nitrogenous compounds like NO and NOx⁻. This conversion not only significantly boosts the industrial value and energy density of the resulting products, making them suitable for diverse applications in agriculture, pharmaceuticals, and the chemical industry, but also minimises the need for product transportation in a straighforward CO2RR process. Electrocatalysts play a vital role in C-N bond formation. Catalyst design strategies are required to improve chemisorption for the C–N intermediates and suppress the competitive reactions.
Research Progress:
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Developed a metal oxide nanocomposite catalyst that generates formamide (HCONH2), a key component in plastic industries. We demonstrated the pioneering study of simultaneous electroreduction of CO2 and NOx⁻ to formamide in a continuous flow electrolyser.
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Developed an electrocatalyst to generate urea via co-electroreduction of CO2 and NO2-