Time and place: Mar. 27, 2026 1:15 PM – 4:00 PM, Chemistry Building, UiO.
Main research findings
CO₂ hydrogenation to methanol is a promising carbon capture and utilization strategy that can reduce CO₂ emissions while producing sustainable liquid fuels. Methanol serves as an attractive liquid organic hydrogen carrier and an important industrial feedstock. However, the mechanistic origin of the high catalytic activity in amine-assisted systems remains unclear, limiting the rational design of earth-abundant metal catalysts for direct CO₂ hydrogenation to methanol.
This thesis addresses this challenge through three integrated studies. The first combines computational mechanistic investigations with microkinetic modeling to elucidate the mechanism of amine-assisted CO₂ hydrogenation to methanol. The predicted methanol production was validated against experimental data, enabling comparison of competing pathways and analysis of the influence of initial reactant concentrations. The second study demonstrates that a simple thermodynamic descriptor can serve as a rational design principle for selecting effective amine co-catalysts. It further shows that methanol can be produced under basic conditions using an earth-abundant manganese catalyst and identifies the key intermediate governing the reaction energy span and productivity. The third study integrates linear free-energy scaling relationships with energy-span analysis to construct a molecular volcano plot, enabling predictive screening of bifunctional pincer catalysts and identification of promising Fe- and Mn-based systems.
Committees
Chair of defence
Professor Ola Nilsen. Department of Chemistry, University of Oslo, Norway
Members of the evaluation committee
Professor Natalie Fey. University of Bristol, United Kingdom
Professor Max Garcia-Melchor. CIC energiGUNE, Spain
Researcher Erik Ingemar Tellgren. Department of Chemistry, University of Oslo, Norway
Members of the supervisors committee
Senior Researcher Ainara Nova Flores. Department of Chemistry, University of Oslo, Norway
Professor Unni Olsbye. Department of Chemistry, University of Oslo, Norway
Senior Researcher David Balcells Badia. Department of Chemistry, University of Oslo, Norway
Funding
The project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation program under the Marie Sklodowska-Curie (grant agreement no. 945371 (COMPSCI program)).