Purdue Catalysis Center
The Purdue Catalysis Center (PCC) is a highly interactive association of the research groups of Professors Rakesh Agrawal, Nicholas Delgass, Rajamani Gounder, Jeffrey Greeley, Christina Li, Peilin Liao, Jeffrey Miller, Fabio Ribeiro, and Arvind Varma.
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Welcome to the Purdue Catalysis Center!
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CISTAR: the Center for Innovative and Strategic Transformation of Alkane Resources
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Welcome to the Purdue Catalysis Center!
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Welcome to the Purdue Catalysis Center!
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Collecting kinetics in the laboratory.
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The Bell Tower and Hovde Hall overlooking the Engineering Fountain.
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Educating a new generation of Chemical Engineers.
While each individual group expertly represents specific subsets of catalysis, the interaction of these groups results in a research entity capable of tackling fundamental questions of catalytic activity with expertise in areas ranging from materials synthesis to electronic structure calculations, including chemical kinetics and a number of characterization techniques.
Mission Statement
The mission of the Purdue Catalysis Center is to:
- Promote quality and innovative research in the area of catalysis
- Serve as a platform for collaborative research efforts fostering the interaction between industry, national labs, and academia.
- Educate a new generation of catalysis researchers in the theory and best practices of catalytic science.
Objective
Advances in catalysis will be driven by design of increasingly selective active sites, enabled by new synthesis chemistries, detailed chemical and kinetic characterization, and strong guidance from theory. To achieve this, we have built a team with experts in the following areas:
The Purdue Catalysis Center is uniquely positioned to push this research frontier forward and eager to bring its strengths to address new catalytic challenges.
| Area of Expertise | Goal |
| Materials synthesis | Achieve well-defined active sites of specified composition, geometry, and spatial positioning |
| Catalyst characterization | Observe local chemistry of active sites and their interaction with adsorbed and reaction molecules, ideally in operando |
| Chemical kinetics | Propose sequence of elementary reaction steps and describe both steady state and dynamic response data |
| Electronic structure calculations | Test “picture” of catalytic reaction, use trends to predict optimum catalysts, compute energies that are hard to measure |