Podcast #5: Bright Jaato and Leander Kucklick: Science for the Energy Transition

Climate change is one of the biggest challenges of mankind. As we use more and more energy, it is crucial to make it as renewable as possible. Since renewable energy sources like solar panels and wind turbines are very volatile, i.e their output fluctuates with sunshine and wind, storage of energy is critical. A promising approach includes the production of hydrogen through electrical power in electrolyzers. Water electrolysis, however, is highly inefficient when not supported through catalyst materials. Established catalysts are mostly from the Platinum group of noble metals and therefore rare and expensive. Thus, substantial research currently goes into the hunt for new abundant catalyst materials to scale up the hydrogen economy. Leander, a PhD student at the Chair of Energy Technology at University of Duisburg talks about his research in the DIMENSION project. DIMENSION is a collaborative project involving scientists at University of Duisburg-Essen and Ruhr-University Bochum on new functional materials for energy conversion systems.

Bright is a PhD student in Technical chemistry at the University of Duisburg-Essen and talks about his research on CO2 reduction. The electrochemical reduction of CO2 describes the conversion of carbon CO2 to more reduced chemical species using electrical energy. The chemical products can be (re)used as fuels or in the chemical industry. It represents a form of carbon capture and utilization and might thus contribute to the amelioration of climate change effects.

Bright and Leander talk about their research with Theresa and Nicolas in this episode. Enjoy.