DIFFER seminar: The Catalytic Science of Making Up and Breaking Up Dinitrogen

Abstract:  The catalytic chemistry of nitrogen is inextricably linked with mankind?s use of energy. Largescale nitrogen fixation (N₂ ? NH₃) revolutionized the production of fertilizer, enabled the population explosion of the 20th century, and now accounts for several percent of the world?s annual energy consumption. NOx reduction (NOx ? N₂) is integral to reducing the adverse impacts of transportation on urban air quality and health. These and other technologies all depend at their heart on heterogeneous catalysis. In this presentation I will discuss the insights gained by applying molecular-level models and concepts to nitrogen catalytic chemistry. Examples will be drawn from our work on the selective catalytic reduction of NOx in Cu-exchanged zeolites, a problem that has led us to rethink the factors that govern reactivity in zeolites, from NO and NH₃ oxidation, problems that have caused us to revisit how we model reactions at metal surfaces, and from N₂ oxidation, where we are exploring the potential to bypass the constraints presented by common catalysts by combining with a non-thermal plasma.