Chemical engineering faculty member receives NSF Early Career award

Obioma Uche, a faculty-researcher at Rochester Institute of Technology, is experimenting with selective catalysts to better understand a process that would better convert methane—a key component of natural gas—to ethylene more readily and with fewer process steps. By understanding new pathways to convert methane, the process could result in more environmentally healthy outcomes while producing an important raw material for the chemical industry.

According to the International Energy Agency, focused strategies targeting methane are required to meet global emission reduction goals. Using both renewable energies and a more efficient process such as the one Uche is exploring could help reach these goals.

“Methane is a key component of natural gas which is a fossil fuel,” said Uche, an assistant professor of chemical engineering in RIT’s Kate Gleason College of Engineering. “But the benefit of using natural gas is that there are large untapped sources still present. And the reason this work is so important is not so much the actual source material but the desired end product. Ethylene is the number one organic compound produced worldwide.”

Uche received nearly $250,000 from the National Science Foundation (NSF) Launching Early-Career Academic Pathways in the Mathematical and Physical Science to examine different catalysts, or materials that enable reactions, to successfully convert methane to ethylene.

The two-year project will explore the effectiveness of using an alternative, one-step ethylene production route which reduces the formation of unwanted by-products such as carbon dioxide as opposed to the multi-step process currently being used.

Uche and her team will examine the use of transition metal sulfide catalysts for the conversion of methane to ethylene through the process of sulfur-assisted oxidative coupling. Employing theoretical calculations and simulation techniques, Uche will screen for effective catalysts and investigate the underlying reaction mechanisms.

The project is intended to provide options to enhance the economic viability of this alternative approach to ethylene production in the U.S. chemical industry. Her award will also support efforts to introduce students from underrepresented backgrounds to computational catalysis research through workshops and partnerships.

Process efficiencies would help keep up with the demand in the chemical industry for ethylene, a substance used to produce common items from packaging and detergents to tires and ripening agents. Methane and carbon dioxide, by-products of industrialization, are the two largest contributors of global warming.

“Previous research has been done in this area, but there’s lot less information about this process,” she said. “What is the pathway for this reaction? What is the mechanism for this reaction? What kind of kinetics is expected? What is the best sulfide catalyst to help you perform this oxidated coupling of methane? There are a lot of gaps that need to be filled, so as a computational scientist, I can use simulation tools to help fill in some of the gaps.”