PhD Studentship: Coupling Carbon Capture to Anodic Electrochemical Synthesis

Department: Chemistry

Title: Coupling Carbon Capture to Anodic Electrochemical Synthesis

Application deadline: All year round                                                                                                                                                   

To apply please click on the 'Apply' button above.

This 3.5 year PhD project is funded by The University of Manchester; tuition fees will be paid and you will receive an annual tax free stipend set by the UKVI (£19,237 for 2024/25). We expect the stipend to increase every year. This project is for home students with settled status.

The start date is 1st October 2025.

To limit the impact of humanity on the environment, the chemicals industry must transition to sustainable technologies. The chemicals industry is a “hard to decarbonise” sector as its high embedded carbon comes from its intensive energy use and fossil fuels feedstocks. The electrochemical conversion of CO2 offers the potential for the net CO2 negative synthesis of key platform chemicals.

To date, most approaches have focused on cathodic CO2 reduction (CO2R), to produce a range of carbon products from CO to propanol, while the coupled anode reaction has been neglected. Anodic water oxidation to oxygen is used as a simple and convenient reaction to balance the cathodic charge. The thermodynamics of water oxidation require a minimum potential of 1.23 V vs RHE, this limits the system energy efficiency while forming product of little to no value. Water oxidation at the anode will be replaced with ethylene oxidation to ethylene oxide (EO)- the 12th highest-volume organic chemical, serving as a versatile intermediate that can be transformed into value added chemicals such as ethylene glycol, ethanolamines and epoxy resins. This will overcome outstanding limitations in the reaction pathway and improve the overall system value proposition (measured by the plant-gate levelized cost (PGLC)) through a holistic approach to reaction pathway and reactor design that combines experiment with multiphysics modelling.

Applicants should have, or expect to achieve, at least a 2.1 honours degree or a master’s (or international equivalent) in a relevant science or engineering related discipline.

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