[Todos] seminario DQIAQF - Jueves 18

[damian en qi.fcen.uba.ar]

 JUEVES 18 de NOVIEMBRE, 13 hs
 Aula de Seminarios, DQIAQF-INQUIMAE, 3er piso Pab 2.

Tailoring of nano and meso structures for energy and environmental
applications

Caetano Rodrigues Miranda
Universidade Federal do ABC - Centro de Ciências Naturais e Humanas
Santo André - SP – Brazil

The necessity to satisfy the world’s huge demand of energy in an
environmentally friendly way has lead to increasing interest in
the use of renewable and clean sources of energy. At the same time,
new sources and methodologies are needed to explore fossil fuels
with higher efficient in energy conversion combining with CO2
capture. Nanotechnology offers several opportunities to solve such
problems related with Energy industry. By means of multiscaling
computational methods (First principles calculations, Molecular
Dynamics and Lattice Boltzmann), we have explored the
possibilities to tailor nano and mesostructures for energy applications.
One of them is the possibility to use hard nanoparticles to control
the wettability phenomena between the three-phase system
(oil-water-minerals) at reservoir conditions of temperature,
pressure and salinity. Here, we present a combined experimental
and modeling study of hydroxylated silica nanoparticles as candidate
to an enhanced oil recovery agent and an understanding of the
wettability phenomena at nanoscale. In addition to this, we have
also explored the use of metallic nanofilms to better understanding
the adsorption/desorption processes of hydrogen and ethanol. Recent
experimental results have shown that metallic nanofilms formed by
different layers of metals are promising candidates for hydrogen
storage. Particularly, palladium nanofilms deposited on platinum
substrate presents a good reversibility of adsorption/desorption process.
In this context, we study by first principles methods the hydrogen and
ethanol adsorption on metallic nanofilms of Pd/Pt(111) and Pt/Pd(111),
as well as the oxidation process of ethanol on these surfaces and
other alternative metallic nanofilms.