Veni Tom Burdyny

The Dutch Research Council (NWO) has awarded a Veni grant worth up to 250,000 euros to twelve highly promising young scientists from TU Delft. The grant provides the laureates with the opportunity to further elaborate their own ideas during a period of three years. Tom Burdyny is one of the e-Refinery scientists who has been awarded a Veni grant.

Tom Burdyny - Powering a revolution with carbon

New energy technologies that produce electricity, chemicals and fuels with low-carbon intensities are essential in the upcoming energy transition away from fossil-fuels. One such technology, electrochemical CO₂ reduction (also known as CO₂ electrolyzers), can fill this role by directly converting carbon-dioxide into base chemicals such as carbon-monoxide, ethylene and ethanol, building blocks for many common chemicals and fuels.

CO₂ electrolyzers are still in the early stage of development, however, with almost all current work focused on finding catalysts which can reduce CO₂ with excellent catalytic properties including selectivity, activity and stability. Comparatively little effort has gone into the CO₂ electrolyzer reactor itself, which is essential to scale the technology to industrially-relevant sizes capable of impacting global CO₂ emissions. Thus, even if ideal catalysts were discovered tomorrow, we lack the knowledge of how to implement them at a commercial scale. Tom Burdyny (Materials for Energy Conversion and Storage), who participates in the ambitious e-Refinery initiative, seeks to design and construct a 1 kW CO₂ electrolyzer that is inherently stable and forms the foundation for further scaling.

Read more: Twelve Veni awards for TU Delft researchers