Stephanie Pecaut, a senior in chemical and biomolecular engineering (ChBE) at Rice University, won first place in the American Institute of Chemical Engineers’ undergraduate poster competition for catalysis and reaction engineering.
Her poster is titled “Efficient conversion of low-concentration nitrate sources into ammonia on Ru dispersed Cu nanowire electrocatalyst.” The competition was held during AIChE’s annual student conference held Nov. 11-14 in Phoenix and was sponsored by Omega Chi Epsilon, the chemical engineering honor society.
Pecaut is a member of the research lab at Rice headed by Haotian Wang, the William Marsh Rice Trustee Chair and assistant professor of ChBE. Her adviser is Feng-Yang Chen, a fourth-year doctoral student in ChBE.
“The work is exciting,” Pecaut said, “because our catalyst shows exceptional performance while still operating under industrially viable conditions. It has potential applications in replacing the Haber-Bosch process, wastewater purification and high-density hydrogen-energy storage.”