Four UCSB Professors Receive 3-Year Program Grant from Royal Dutch Shell

UCSB Chemical Engineering Professors Mike Gordon, Mike Doherty, Eric McFarland and Horia Metiu of the Chemistry department have been awarded a 3-year program grant from Royal Dutch Shell for work on decarbonizing natural gas to produce clean hydrogen and solid carbon. The department of Chemical Engineering will administer the award. 

Gordon, Doherty, Metiu and McFarland will perform joint work investigating the use of complex molten metal catalysts for pyrolysis and reactive separation of natural gas into solid carbon and hydrogen gas. Methane pyrolysis is a potential CO2-free bridge technology for use over the next 4-5 decades while natural gas is available at low cost during the transition to a sustainable hydrogen economy. This technology allows us to decarbonize fossil fuels and use their chemical potential for power generation and heat in hydrogen combustion and fuel cells as well as for ammonia synthesis.

For more information, their recent work on the topic has appeared in 2017 publications in Chem. Eng. Technol. 10.1002/ceat.201600414, and Chemical Engineering Journal 313 (2017) 136–143.