Earl Goetheer
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RESEARCH AREA
Electrochemistry is going to be an important tool for the conversion of not only biobased feedstock to value added chemicals, but as well for the production of commodity chemicals starting from CO2 and CO. It is to be expected that with the surge of renewable electricity production, commercial and environmental options can be created for the chemical industry. In particular, if the electrochemical processes can be adapted for flexible/dynamic operation. The main research direction in my group is related to process, system engineering and scaling up. A significant electrochemical infrastructure has been established at TNO and TUDelft including flow reactors system. Novel reactor systems (incl paired electrosynthesis), integrated product separation and feedstock integration (eg integration CO2 capture with electrochemical conversion) are studied.
RECENT RESULTS
There are two research lines. Some recent results per research line is given below:
- Power to specialties
- Demonstration of the production of value added chemicals from biobased materials in electrochemical flow reactors such as hydroxymethylfurfural (HMF) to furandicarboxylic acid (FDCA), furfural to maleic acid, levulinic acid to valeric acid
- Power to commodities
- A novel system has been developed which is based on the capture of CO2 in a reactive absorption liquid and the subsequent reduction of the absorbed CO2 to formic acid with a faradaic efficiency of more than 60% with significant room for further optimisation. This is a significant step towards commercial interesting production of industrial relevant chemicals from CO2
- Demonstration paired electrosynthesis of CO2 to CO and chloride to chlorine in a flow reactor
PHD SUPERVISION
- Hengameh Farahmandazad (integration CO2 capture with conversion)
TOP PUBLICATIONS
- Pérez-Gallent, Elena; Turk, Susan; Latsuzbaia, Roman; Bhardwaj, Rajat; Anastasopol, Anca; Sastre, Francesc; Garcia, Amanda Cristina; Giling, Erwin; Goetheer, Earl LV; ,"Electroreduction of CO2 to CO paired with 1, 2-propanediol oxidation to lactic acid. Towards a economically feasible system.", Industrial & Engineering Chemistry Research,58,16,6195-6202,2019
- Latsuzbaia, R; Bisselink, R; Anastasopol, A; van der Meer, H; van Heck, R; Yagüe, M Segurola; Zijlstra, M; Roelands, M; Crockatt, M; Goetheer, E; ,"Continuous electrochemical oxidation of biomass derived 5-(hydroxymethyl) furfural into 2, 5-furandicarboxylic acid", Journal of Applied Electrochemistry,48,6,611-626,2018
- Bisselink, R, Crockatt M., Zijlstra, M., Bakker. J., Goetheer, E., Slaghek, T.M., Van Es, D.S., “Identification of more benign cathode materials for the electrochemical reduction of levulinic acid to valeric acid”, ChemElectroChem, 2019, 3285-3290