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Full-Text Articles in Thermodynamics

Computationally-Driven Insights Into The Ligand Environments Of Materials For Catalysis And Separations, Stephen Vicchio Dec 2023

Computationally-Driven Insights Into The Ligand Environments Of Materials For Catalysis And Separations, Stephen Vicchio

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Designing new catalytic and sorption materials is necessary to limit global temperature rise below 1.5 ◦C by 2050, while also meeting global energy demands. Climate change and energy production are not mutually exclusive; global population growth has direct impacts on global energy demands and climate. In both catalysis and adsorption applications, new technologies are needed to address these challenges. Catalysis can provide alternate, low-energy routes for converting low-value gases into higher-value chemical commodities, thus altering our current energy production. Likewise, new sorption materials can capture previously emitted CO2 from decades of energy production from fossil fuels, thus helping to …


Probing The Structure Of Water On Surfaces: From Water Absorption To Ice Nucleation, Jiarun Zhou May 2023

Probing The Structure Of Water On Surfaces: From Water Absorption To Ice Nucleation, Jiarun Zhou

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Water, essential for all life forms, is the most abundant, simple, yet mysterious molecule in the world. This molecule, consisting of only three atoms, behaves in unexpectedly different ways with the change of environment. In the past, studies of water under different conditions (temperature, pressure, on the surfaces, with confinement) have been conducted using experimental and computational methods. However, the influence of a given environment on water properties is yet to be fully understood. This dissertation studies water at complex interfaces (surfaces with various chemistry and physics properties) in both the liquid and crystalline states. Various heterogeneous systems used to …


Bridging The Gap Between Phase Behavior And Processing For Renewable And Refinable Carbonaceous Precursors, Graham Tindall May 2023

Bridging The Gap Between Phase Behavior And Processing For Renewable And Refinable Carbonaceous Precursors, Graham Tindall

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As a category of materials, engineered carbons, specifically carbon fibers, are first-in-class for properties such as modulus, specific strength, and thermal resilience; however, the inability to directly process atomic carbon necessitates the development and optimization of carbonaceous precursors. Because the structure and properties of carbon are highly dependent on the precursors and requisite processing, numerous materials have been investigated as feedstocks for large-scale production. Although cellulose and rayon were among the first investigated, polyacrylonitrile (PAN) is the current hegemon of carbon fiber precursors. PAN feeds 90% of this market, but it is neither inexpensive nor renewable. Because a significant fraction …


Elucidation Of Active Site And Mechanism Of Metal Catalysts Supported In Nu-1000, Hafeera Shabbir Dec 2022

Elucidation Of Active Site And Mechanism Of Metal Catalysts Supported In Nu-1000, Hafeera Shabbir

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Advances in extraction of shale oil and gas has increased the production of geographically stranded natural gas (primarily consisting of methane (C1) and ethane (C2)) that is burned on site. A potential utilization strategy for shale gas is to convert it into fuel range hydrocarbons by catalytic dehydrogenation followed by oligomerization by direct efficient catalysts. This work focuses on understanding metal cation catalysts supported on metal-organic framework (MOF) NU-1000 that will actively and selectively do this transformation under mild reaction conditions, while remaining stable to deactivation (via metal agglomeration or sintering). I built computational models validated by experimental methods to …