Robin Conradi

PhD Candidate
Employed since: November 2024
Email: r.conradi@uu.nl
Room: VMC 2.06

Research

Research

CO and CO2 hydrogenation catalysis is a promising pathway for transforming waste streams into valuable chemical building blocks. These waste streams, originating from steel manufacturing industries and agricultural and municipal waste processing, also contain nitrogen-, sulfur-, and phosphorous species, which can influence the catalytic performance of the Co/TiO2 Fisher-Tropsch (FTS) catalyst. These species could migrate into the catalyst particle to form metal carbides, metal oxides, metal sulfides, metal nitride, and metal phosphide alloys.

This project aims to quantify and adequately understand the effect of these critical gas-phase “impurities” in the FTS catalytic system. Using an array of operando and in-situ spectroscopic techniques, we could disentangle the different surface and bulk Co-C/O/N/S/P contributions in the CO and CO2 hydrogenation process. This approach could lay the foundation for making these catalytic systems more robust against the different gas-phase contaminants that are present in more renewable carbon resources, such as agricultural and municipal waste.

CV

CV

2024 – present
PhD Candidate in the group of prof. dr. ir. Bert Weckhuysen, Inorganic Chemistry and Catalysis at Utrecht University

Project: Alloying, Poisoning, and Support Effects in Cobalt-based CO and CO2 Hydrogenation Catalysis

2022 – 2024
Master’s degree in nanomaterials science, Utrecht University

Master thesis at the Inorganic Chemistry and Catalysis group: ‘Functionalized Spray-dried Chitosan Microspheres as Support for Sustainable Metallocene Olefin Polymerization Catalysis’ under the supervision of Joren Dorresteijn and prof. dr. Eelco Vogt.

Internship at Ioniqa Technologies, Eindhoven: Supported Catalysts for PET Glycolysis: Understanding the Influence of Support Materials on the Depolymerization Kinetics, supervised by Dr. Francesco Mattarozzi and Dr. Silvia Zanoni.

2019 – 2022
Bachelor’s degree in chemistry, Utrecht University

Bachelor thesis at the Inorganic Chemistry and Catalysis group: ‘Novel Inorganic Microspherical Support for Metallocene Olefin Polymerization Catalysis’ under the supervision of Joren Dorresteijn and prof. dr. Eelco Vogt.

2013 – 2019
High school education at ‘t Hooghe Landt College in Amersfoort.

2001
Born May 14th in Amersfoort, the Netherlands