Environmental electrochemistry and electrosynthesis in membrane reactors

Everybody knows about fuels cells in our days. Almost everybody knows that in fuel cell the chemical energy is directly converted into electric energy.

But! Not many students know that fuel cell can also be used as an electrochemically promoted catalyst or an electrochemical membrane reactor, i.e. as the exact opposite device converting electric energy into chemical energy. Moreover many scientific groups all over the world are working in this area trying to solve important environmental problems or using the electrochemical membrane reactors for promotion of important catalytic reactions or even create new routes for these reactions.

The "Section for Proton Conducters" (Department of Chemistry) is no newcomer in this area. For almost 10 years we have been working in the field of the environmental electrochemistry, studying the electrochemical promotion of the SO₂ oxidation and NO reduction.

At present we can offer two areas for student projects (BSc, MSc):

• Electrochemical NO filter (use of polymeric electrolyte fuel cell as a membrane reactor).
• Electrochemical synthesis (for example Fischer-Tropsh synthesis) using polymeric electrolyte fuel cell as a membrane reactor. The Fischer-Tropsch synthesis is the synthetic production of among other things gasoline from typically natural gas.

For further information, contact: Irina Petrushina, Niels J. Bjerrum, or Lars N. Cleemann