Udishnu Sanyal

Postdoctoral Student

Catalysis Research Center and Chemistry Department

Technische Universität München

Lichtenbergstraße 4

85748 Garching, Germany

 

Curriculum

2015 - PresentPostdoctoral researcher at the Lehrstuhl für Technische Chemie II, Technische Universität München. (Prof. Johannes A. Lercher)
2013 – 2015Postdoctoral Research Fellow at Laboratoire de Physique et Chimie de Nano-Objects (LPCNO), Institut National des Sciences Appliquées (INSA) at Toulouse, France
2007 – 2013Ph.D student at Indian Institute of Science (IISc), Bangalore, India
2005 - 2007M.Sc. in Chemistry at Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), Madras, India

Selected Publications

Sanyal, U.; Ener, S.; Anagnostopoulou, E.; Pouthomis, M.; Fazzini, P. –F.; Lacroix, L. –M.; Skolov, K. P.; Gutfleisch, O.; Viau, G. Chem. Mater. 2016, 28, 4982.

Gole, B.; Sanyal, U.; Mukherjee, P. S. Chem Commun. 2015, 51, 4872.  

Sanyal, U.; Jagirdar, B. R. Inorg. Chem. 2012, 51, 13023.  

Sanyal, U.; Demirci, U. B.; Jagirdar, B. R.; Miele, P. ChemSusChem. 2011, 4, 1731.

Research

The synthesis of zero-carbon-footprint energy carriers will depend on the availability of H2 synthesized without CO2 emission and the possibility to couple its generation with processes that store hydrogen in chemical bonds. In this way the electric energy generated from renewable sources such as wind, solar and hydropower may be potentially stored as hydrocarbon energy carriers used today, e.g., as transportation fuels. Hydrogen needs to be generated by electrolysis or photocatalysis via water splitting. Combining both steps makes electrocatalytic hydrogenation (ECH) the conceptually most promising route to a decentralized production of energy carriers. For biomass-derived intermediates, generated via thermal or chemical deconstruction of lignocellulose or algae ECH could serve as first stage process to stabilize these feeds, and make them compatible with further processing. Ultimately, however, this stabilized mixture has to be converted to hydrocarbons ready to be blended into transportation fuels. Nevertheless, the major bottleneck is the facile hydrogen evolution compared to the hydrogenation on the catalyst surface which reduces ECH efficiency. The goal of this research is to characterize the elementary steps in the hydrogenation of model oxygenates (typical lignin derived intermediates) and use this insight for rational development of electrocatalysts showing high activity and selectivity for ECH. Owing to the different dependency of both hydrogenation and hydrogen evolution on electronic nature of the metal and their size and shape, we propose to synthesize different metal nanoparticles with controlled size and morphology and test them as the catalyst to control the rate of both competitive reactions. Usage of different oxygenates will further allow us to study the effect of their adsorption on the metal surface and their influence on ECH efficiency. The physicochemical characterization coupled with the reaction kinetics of various model oxygenates will allow us to define complete structure-activity relationships and, thus, shape the base improve catalyst properties and synthesize successful catalysts for combining the ECH reactions with high activity and selectivity.