Abstract

In response to climate change, most countries have set an aggressive decarbonization goal to achieve net zero by 2050. Within this overarching goal, one of the major efforts in the reaction engineering discipline is to increase the atom- and energy-efficiencies of catalytic processes and to create new pathways for upcycling of waste and renewable feedstock, chemically transforming them into value-added products and liquid energy carriers. Our work in heterogeneous catalysis area focuses on developing tools and knowledge framework on understanding the origin of the reactivity trends on catalyst surfaces, identifying kinetic descriptors that would capture such trends, and then designing active site structures and reaction environment that would enable efficient catalytic turnovers. In my talk, I will share examples of our strategies towards understanding the catalytic requirements of activating strong C-H and C-O bonds, and how we might translate this fundamental knowledge to industrial practices.  

Biography

Ya-Huei (Cathy) Chin is Professor and Canada Research Chair (Tier II) in Advanced Catalysis for Sustainable Chemistry at the University of Toronto. She joined the University in 2011, after receiving her Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.) degree in Chemical Engineering from the University of California, Berkeley.

She is passionate about understanding the general traits of catalytic events at the molecular scale level. Her recent work focuses on drawing mechanistic linkages for catalytic events during alkane oxidation on Group VIII metal clusters and conversion of oxygenates to value-added chemicals and liquid fuels. She serves as an associate editor for the Journal of Catalysis and as an advisory board member for several premier journals of the field, including Applied Catalysis B: Environmental, Reaction Chemistry and Engineering, Chem Catalysis, and Canadian Journal of Chemical Engineering.