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Workshop / Seminar

CHE 598 Seminar: Future of Hydrogen Storage May Already Be In Your Kitchen

Center for Undergraduate Education (CUE), NE Troy Lane, Pullman, WA 99164
Room 114 - Pullman | TFLO 210 - TriCities
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About the event

Presenter: Katarzyna Grubel, Staff Chemist, Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL)

Biography: Dr. Katarzyna Grubel completed her MSc in Organic Technology at the Silesian University of Technology in Gliwice in 2005. In 2011, she obtained her Inorganic Chemistry PhD at the Utah State University in Logan. That same year she began her Post-Doctoral appointment at the University of Rochester. In 2013, Dr. Grubel moved with the research group to the Yale University in New Haven, CT. Then in 2015, Dr. Grubel become a Post-Doctoral Researcher at PNNL, in Richland, WA, in the Catalysis Science Group. Dr. Grubel has since continued her work at PNNL, even being promoted in 2018 to a Staff Chemist position in the Applied Chemistry group. Currently, her interests span the fields of CO2 capture and utilization, H2 carriers, and NMR spectroscopy.

Abstract: With the increasing emissions of green-house gases and the changing attitudes toward fossil fuels the energy landscape is rapidly evolving. Energy sources that were once dominant are facing more intense scrutiny due to their polluting effects. One of the alternative clean power sources is hydrogen; however, in its compressed gaseous form, the wide applicability of hydrogen will remain limited. In an attempt to increase the use of hydrogen to store and transport clean energy, we have turned to dissolvable hydrogen sources: formate salts. Two main benefits are ease of handling and non-toxicity; an as a icing on a cake, release of hydrogen from formate salts leads to formation of bicarbonates, which can be hydrogenated back to formates for cyclical energy storage. I will discuss our experimental results on hydrogenation/dehydrogenation reactions as pertinent to this cycle.

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