04/03/2023
By Sanjeev Manohar
Title: Understanding and Manipulating Aldolization Chemistries to Produce Jet and Diesel Biofuels from Platform Oxygenates
Date: Thursday, April 6, 2023
Time: 3:30 - 4:30 p.m.
Venue: Shah Hall 310
Abstract:
Nathaniel Eagan will discuss the societal need for new sustainable liquid transportation fuels for use in jet and diesel applications. He will introduce the concept of building these new fuels using oxygenated “platform molecules” which can be efficiently obtained from lignocellulosic biomass and other abundant, renewable resources. He will discuss aldolization promoted by heterogeneous catalysts as a method to sequentially form carbon-carbon bonds between oxygenates, oligomerizing them into heavy molecules for use in these fuels. He will specifically focus on the opportunities and challenges with oligomerizing bioethanol and subsequently discuss methods to gain improved understanding of these materials in order to guide novel catalyst design for next-generation biofuel synthesis. His presentation will focus both on his lab’s current research at Tufts University and motivating studies from his Ph.D. research at the University of Wisconsin, Madison.
Bio:
Eagan is an Assistant Professor at Tufts University in the Chemical and Biological Engineering Department. He holds a BS in Chemical Engineering from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst and a PhD in the same field from the University of Wisconsin, Madison, where he focused on catalytically converting biomass-derived oxygenates into heavy fuel molecules. He conducted postdoctoral research at Tufts University and Harvard University focused on dilute-limit alloy catalysis. At Tufts his lab focuses on using well-defined materials to convert abundant feedstocks into new fuels and chemicals, using reaction kinetics modeling to practically guide novel catalyst development for complex reactions.