Background

Education

• National Taiwan University , B.S. Chemical Engineering (2012)
• Purdue University, Ph.D. Chemical Engineering (2013 – present)

Awards

• Presidential Award for Academic Excellence, Chemical Engineering, National Taiwan University: ranking within the top 5% for 4 out of 8 semesters (2010-2012)
• Purdue Eastman Summer Graduate Fellowship in Chemical Engineering (2015)

Project Description

Shale gas production in the U.S. and the rest of the world is increasing recently. Conversion of alkanes in the natural gas to valuable chemical products such as alkenes will thus become more and more important. Methane and ethane are the most abundant components in the natural gas. They can be utilized by several promising processes to produce ethylene, which is a basic building block in chemistry to manufacture many chemical products. The primary goal of my research is to study the catalysts used for methane and ethane conversion, specifically to form ethylene.

I have been working on studying the active sites of Mn/Na₂WO₄/SiO₂ catalyst for oxidative coupling of methane (OCM). This project focuses on the nature of the active sites on the catalyst surface by kinetic measurements in combination with characterization techniques such as X-ray Diffraction (X-ray), scanning electron microscopy (SEM), and energy-dispersive X-ray spectroscopy (EDX). I have also been involved in ethane dehydrogenation project with bimetallic Pd-In, Pt-In, and Pt-Zn catalysts. The ethylene selectivity change after the addition of the second metal to monometallic Pd or Pt and kinetic studies including turnover rate (TOR) and apparent activation energy have been investigated. X-ray absorption spectroscopy (XAS), synchrotron X-ray Diffraction (XRD), scanning transmission electron spectroscopy (STEM) and infrared spectroscopy (IR) have been used to characterize the intermetallic catalysts with particle size as small as 2 nm. Geometric and electronic effects have been examined to understand the changes in product selectivity, turnover rate and apparent activation energy.