Public Lecture | Catalysis: the Hidden Path to Foods, Fuels and Our Future скачать в хорошем качестве

Public Lecture | Catalysis: the Hidden Path to Foods, Fuels and Our Future

The high standard of living we enjoy today is made possible by catalysts ­– behind-the-scenes agents that promote chemical reactions in the vast majority of industrial processes, including production of fertilizers, gasoline and other essential products. But we have only a poor understanding of how catalysts actually work. At SLAC's Stanford Synchrotron Radiation Lightsource (SSRL), we are using X-rays to watch catalysts in action at an atomic scale. By observing catalytic reactions in experimental chambers under conditions that mimic large-scale commercial processes, we gain fundamental insights with great practical value for designing industrial catalysts that are more specific and more powerful. About the Speaker: Simon Bare is a distinguished staff scientist at SLAC’s SSRL and an adjunct professor in the Department of Chemical Engineering at the University of California, Davis. He obtained his PhD in chemistry from the University of Liverpool in 1982 and held postdoctoral fellowships at Cornell University and the DOE’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. He then transitioned to R&D in industrial chemistry. Bare spent 10 years with the Dow Chemical Company's research group and 19 years at UOP LLC, a Honeywell company. He started a new career at SLAC in 2016, leading a group that uses X-ray spectroscopy to study how catalysts work.