Amount Awarded: $21,000
Any feasible technological solution to the global environmental/sustainability nexus will have to employ technologies based on
heterogeneous catalysts as key ingredients, including industrial chemical processes and waste treatment. This project will address the primary research challenge in heterogeneous catalysis - measuring the rates of catalytic reactions and identifying the exact nature of the active sites that mediate them. Two sophisticated characterization tools at Berkeley and UiO will be used in conjunction to secure an innovative source of reconciled spectroscopic and kinetic data about functioning states of selective heterogeneous catalysts. This unique collaborative opportunity will allow the co-proposers to establish an unprecedented general characterization approach, and will strengthen their long-term convergent research programs with regard to selectivity control in heterogeneous catalysis.