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Synthesis And Characterization Of Transition Metal Oxide Catalysts For Environmental And Energy Storage Applications, Wenqiao Song

Doctoral Dissertations

Nowadays, environmental concerns and the global energy crisis have become two of our greatest challenges. The main purpose of this dissertation research is to design highly active mesoporous materials that can efficiently catalyze environmental and energy related reactions. Surface properties can be easily tuned by thermal treatment and cation doping, resulting in improved catalytic activities. Synthesis and characterization of the materials, catalytic activities for carbon monoxide oxidation, oxygen reduction and oxygen evolution reactions, and mechanistic studies are covered in this thesis.

The first part describes the synthesis of mesoporous cobalt oxides through an inverse micelle route for low temperature carbon …

Mesoporous Manganese Oxide Materials For Aerobic Oxidation Reactions, Sourav Biswas

Doctoral Dissertations

The thesis presented here is focused on fabricating thermally stable and tunable mesoporous manganese oxide materials for catalytic aerobic oxidation reactions. From the viewpoint of green chemistry, the design of novel methodologies for oxidation, preferably under aerobic atmospheric condition, without any additives is highly desirable. Being motivated by advances in catalytic materials as fundamental pillars of ‘green chemistry’, my research is devoted to designing of useful materials in oxidative catalysis that may serve the purpose of sustainable energy sources in harmony with the environment and nature. The five chapters provided here will discuss the importance of catalytic oxidation reactions, synthesis, …

Synthesis And Optimization Of Mesoporous Materials Using Sol-Gel Based Inverse Micelle Method For Catalysis And Adsorption, Ting Jiang

Doctoral Dissertations

Mesoporous materials have been widely used in redesigning commercially important processes for environmental and economic considerations. They have demonstrated great advantages in providing well-controlled surface area, pore size and volume, and nanocrystalline walls. Compared with microporous materials, they present improvement in molecular mass transfer, thus allowing larger reactant molecules involved in the reaction systems. This study focuses on the synthesis of University of Connecticut (UCT) mesoporous materials by the state-of-the-art sol-gel based inversed micelle method. Modification and optimization of the catalyst structural properties, such as surface area, pore size and volume, crystallinity, and phase were achieved by tuning the synthesis …