Opportunity: Point-of-Need Fuel Synthesis via Advanced Nanomaterials and Reactor Engineering for Tactical Energy

To support decentralized operations in contested logistics environments, this research addresses the logistical burden of fuel transport by developing point-of-need power generation and fuel synthesis. The objective is to design, characterize, and optimize novel, highly selective catalysts and reactor architectures that drive energy-intensive reactions portably and safely at ambient temperatures and pressures.
Participants will engage in hand-on, interdisciplinary research at the intersection of electrochemistry, reactor engineering, and materials science. Specifically, the participant will engineer catalyst slurry formulations, fabricate gas diffusion electrode flow cells, and/or configure photocatalytic UV reactors. To analyze these systems, they will employ advanced electrochemical methods alongside analytical quantification techniques including spectrophotometry and gas chromatography-mass spectrometry (GC-MS).
Additionally, participants will correlate electrochemical performance with structural properties using advanced diagnostic tools like Powder X-Ray Diffraction (PXRD), Transmission Electron Microscopy (TEM), and X-ray Photoelectron Spectroscopy (XPS). The expected outcome of this opportunity is the generation of validated catalyst performance datasets, the refinement of reactor standard operating procedures, and the creation of a technical summary report and research poster for presentation at the summer symposium.