Hillert Materials Modeling Colloquium series XX: How Quantum Mechanics Can Help Identify Mechanisms and Materials to Combat Climate Change

To preserve the planet for future generations, it is not enough to transition to sustainable energy. We must stop emitting carbon into the atmosphere from all sectors, aiming not just for net-zero but net-negative emissions.¹ More than 15 years ago, I pivoted my quantum simulation research to develop methods and design materials for clean electricity (solar cells, fuel cells, and fusion reactors). More recently, we are designing catalysts for renewable fuels and chemicals production, via electro-/solar-thermo-chemical water splitting and photo/electro/solar-thermo-chemical carbon dioxide reduction. However, recycling CO2 is not enough; we must develop sustainable processes to convert and store CO2 in useful, durable products. I will describe our quantum embedding methods that accurately simulate sustainable production of fuels and chemicals catalytically using electricity and/or light, and introduce its use for studying processes related to direct ocean capture of CO2 to form minerals, a strategy for getting to negative emissions.²

Publications

1. See, e.g., this DOE SEAB report I coauthored in 2016: www.energy.gov/seab/downloads/final-report-task-force-co2-utilization
2. C. Hepburn, E. Adlen, J. Beddington, E. A. Carter, S. Fuss, N. Mac Dowell, J. C. Minx, P. Smith, and C. Williams, “The technological and economic prospects for CO2 utilisation and removal,” Nature, 575, 87 (2019). doi: 10.1038/s41586-019-1681-6; see also this NASEM report I coauthored at the end of 2022: nap.nationalacademies.org/catalog/26703/carbon-dioxide-utilization-markets-and-infrastructure-status-and-opportunities-a

Lecturer

Emily A. Carter is the Gerhard R. Andlinger Professor in Energy and the Environment at Princeton University, and Senior Strategic Advisor and Associate Laboratory Director at the U.S. Department of Energy’s Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory (PPPL). She was the Founding Director of the Andlinger Center for Energy and the Environment, and then Dean of Engineering and Applied Science at Princeton. Thereafter, she served as UCLA’s Executive Vice Chancellor and Provost, and as Distinguished Professor of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering, before returning to Princeton and PPPL. The author of nearly 475 publications and patents, she has trained/graduated nearly 100 postdoctoral fellows and Ph.D. students and delivered nearly 600 invited/keynote/plenary lectures worldwide. She is the recipient of numerous honors, including election to the U.S. National Academy of Sciences, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, U.S. National Academy of Inventors, the U.S. National Academy of Engineering, and the European Academy of Sciences.

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