News - Catalysis Group (KinCat)

News_KinCat

Welcome to Mehran Akbarzadeh and Ramona Resmini, our new Exchange Master students for the Spring semester 2022!

Mehran Akbarzadeh is an Erasmus student from Polimi, Milano and will be staying with us for the semester. His project is about Plant design and optimization of hydrogen production from non-condensable gas of plastic pyrolysis.

Ramona Resmini is also an Erasmus student from Polimi, Milano. Her project is to study a series of V/TiO₂-based catalysts for the selective catalytic reduction of NO_x with NH₃ (NH₃-SCR), following the reaction via UV-vis in-situ/operando spectroscopy.

Welcome Dong Lin! our new Exchange PhD student since December 20!

Dong Lin is a PhD exchange student from China University of Petroleum, Qingdao and will be working on 1-hexene epoxidation by metal-incorporated zeolite catalys.

Welcome Zoe Zhihui! our new PhD student since December 1!

Zoe Zhihui Li is a new PhD student. Zoe is going to work with Prof. De Chen and Ass. Prof. Kumar Rout on "Copyrolysis of biomass and plastic wastes to stabilized bio-oils suitable for coprocessing in refinery".

The main objective of the project is to develop co-pyrolysis of biomass and plastic wastes to stabilized bio-oils with low oxygen contents, which can be directly applied to co-processing in a refinery, through developing cost-efficient catalysts for effective catalytic co-pyrolysis and optimizing the catalysts and feedstocks, and improve the operability in co-processing in the refinery. The catalytic (co)pyrolysis of biomass, plastic wastes, and their mixtures will be studied in small pilot plants. The project will be carried out in the Norwegian Center for Environment friendly energy research, biomass for fuels.

Welcome Yurou! our new PhD exchange student since September 15!

Yurou Li is a PhD student at East China University of Science and Technology.Yurou will work with Prof. De Chen with acetylene selective hydrogenation. She will stay with us for one year!

Welcome Albert! Our new PhD student since September 1!

Albert Mirò i Rovira is joining the Biomass project team, together with Kishore Rajendran and Petter Tingelstad. More info on their project coming soon!

Welcome to the new Master students 2021-22!

the Autumn semester 2021 has started and so did the HSE class (August 25-27) with 7 Master students this year! welcome to them onboard!

More info on their project in the KinCat project page!

Welcome Felix! Our new Researcher since August 16!

Felix Herold will work with Prof. Magnus Rønning on Fischer-Tropsch issues.

Felix holds a Bachelor of Science in Chemistry from Technical University of Darmstadt, Germany. He received his Master of Science in Chemistry focusing on "technical Chemistry" from the same University within a research collaboration with TU of Dresden, Germany.

He took his PhD in Technical Chemistry with Prof. Bastian J.M. Etzold at TU Darmstadt, Germany in collaboration with the Shenyang National Laboratory of Materials Science in Shenyang, PR China. His subject is "Polymer-derived Carbons as Catalysts for the Oxidative Dehydrogenation of Alcohols".

3 Webinars scheduled at KinCat from the CATHEX-partnership - May 7 - May 21 and June 4

The CATHEX project, with support from the INTPART program funded by the Research Council of Norway, is a large network project running from 2020 to 2024. It is linking iCSI with four world-leading catalysis groups: University of Cape Town, East China University of Science and Technology, University of Toronto and University of Wisconsin-Madison. The core activity of the network will be to strengthen the integration of theory and experiments in catalysis research and education through personnel exchange and shared workshops.

We are pleased to announce the first lecture in a webinar series from the CATHEX-partnership.

The Lecture will be given by Professor Dr. Patricia J. Kooyman, Department of Chemical Engineering, University of Cape Town on Zoom Friday May 7 from 15-16 (CET): Bridging the pressure gap in transmission electron microscopy

Welcome Björn! Our new PhD Student since April 6!

Björn Baumgarten has started his PhD from April 1.

Björn did his bachelor at the Karlsruher Institute of Technology (KIT) with specialization in process development and scale-up. Then he did his master's 2015-2017 at NTNU, with the specialization in Environmental Catalysis and Biofuels, and the thesis “One-Pot Conversion of Biomass to Chemicals”.

Björn went back to Germany and worked for the University of Applied Forest Sciences Rottenburg in the biomass combustion group from 2018 to 2021. His focus there was reducing emissions from wood combustion

In his PhD project,, he will use an in-situ mass analyzer (ISMA). With this instrument, the mass of catalysts can be measured during the reaction, thus enabling measurement of e.g. coke formation, adsorption and desorption, oxidation and reduction of the catalyst. With this data, a better theoretical understanding of many reactions is possible, which can lead to optimization of eg. reaction conditions or catalysts. Also, it can be used to measure adsorption and desorption phenomena in general.

Associate Professor Jia Yang and Senior Research Scientist Rune Lødeng (SINTEF) will be Björns supervisors.

Welcome Tina! Our new Researcher since April 6!

iSCI gives a warm welcome to Tina Bergh, our new postdoc who started April 6.

Tina has recently finalized her PhD work at Department of Physics, NTNU, where she focused on transmission electron microscopy (TEM) characterisation of Al-Fe(-Si) intermetallic phases in aluminium-steel joints. TEM techniques are versatile and allow assessment of the morphologies, crystal structures, and chemical compositions of thin specimens, with spatial resolution down to atomic scale.

As postdoc with us, Tina will use various diffraction, imaging, and spectroscopy TEM techniques to contribute to better understanding of the structure and composition of the catalysts used in relation to several projects within iCSI. She will also work on development of methods crucial for TEM characterisation of these materials. 25% of Tina's time will be spent on projects at Department of Mechanical and Industrial Engineering. Hilde Johnsen Venvik will act as her iCSI supervisor.

Digital PhD Defense for Hongfei Ma, Tuesday March 23 on Zoom!

Congratulations Dr Hongfei!

The title of the thesis is Kinetic Studies of Ethylene Oxychlorination to Ethylene Dichloride and Vinyl Chloride

The PhD defense was conducted with the opponents and public present digitally, and with his two supervisors, the administrator and the candidate's closest friends present physically.

The committee:
First opponent: Professor Tapio Salmi. Åbo Akademi University, Finland
Second opponent: Professor Xiang Feng. China University of Petroleum (Huadong), China
Administrator: Dr. Li He, Department of Chemical Engineering. NTNU

Digital PhD Defense for Muhammad Zubair, Thursday March 18 on Zoom!

Congratulations Dr Muhammad!

The title of the thesis is Enhanced visible light absorption TiO₂ based catalysts for photocatalytic H₂ generation

The PhD defense was conducted with the opponents and public present digitally, and with only one supervisor, the administrator and the candidate's closest friends present physically.

The committee:
First opponent: Professor Izumi Kumakiri, Yamaguchi University, Japan
Second opponent: Professor Kaiying Wang, University of South-Eastern, Norway
Administrator: Dr. Li He, Department of Chemical Engineering. NTNU

Digital PhD Defense for Endre Fenes, Wednesday March 17 on Zoom!

Congratulations Dr Endre!

The title of the thesis is Ethylene Oxychlorination on CuCl₂ based Catalysts: Mechanism and Kinetics

The PhD defense was conducted with the opponents and public present digitally, and with only two supervisors, the administrator and the candidate's closest family present physically.

The committee:
First opponent: Professor Dmitry Yu. Murzin, Åbo Akademi, Finland
Second opponent: Professor Alessandra Beretta, Politecnico di Milano, Italy
Administrator: Professor Kristin Syverud, NTNU

Welcome to our new Project Engineer, Hammad Farooq!

Hammad was a Master student at the Catalysis group during the year 2019-20 and he is back with us for a period of 6 months working on a direct synthesis process with chloromethane as reactant and Cu-based catalysts. Hammad will study the formation of by-products by means of characterization investigation. The project is in collaboration with Elkem.

More information available on the Research projects description page!

Welcome to our new Guest and Exchange students!

Consolato Rosmini from Bulgaria who will spend 2 months with us as an exchange PhD student, working on Monica Pazos' project

Isabel Maria Pascual Garcia from Spain who will spend her Spring semester with us as Master student, working on CLD project with Mehdi Mahmoodina and prof. Edd Blekkan as supervisors!

Digital PhD Defense for Jianyu Ma, Tuesday January 26 on Zoom!

Congratulations Dr. Jianyu!

PhD supervisors: Prof. Edd Anders Blekkan, Adjunct Prof. Kumar Ranjan Rout

High-temperature desulfurization of biomass-derived synthesis gas using solid sorbents

Trial Lecture -Status and outlook for high temperature solid sorbents based CO2 capture processes

Christmas gathering for our Master students who presented their Specialization work today!

The specialization projects presentations are organized each year at the end of the Autumn semester where the students presents what they have been working since August in the labs.

This year the projects presentations were organized digitally on Monday, December 14 for 8 Master students.

Welcome to Katarzyna Swirk! - our new Researcher since October 5 2020

Katarzyna comes from a position as Postdoctoral researcher at Université de Montpellier, ICGM, DAMP and MACS group.

At KinCAT, Katarzyna will work on Design of low-cost and carbon-resistant Ni-based mesoporous silicas for chemical CO₂ utilization through tri-reforming of methane together with Magnus Rønning

Welcome to the new Master students 2020-21!