Houston scientist earns nanocarbon research award named after fellow Rice chemist

full circle

Bruce Weisman's career has come full circle with a recent award. Photo via rice.edu

Rice University chemist Bruce Weisman has been awarded the Richard E. Smalley Research Award for his decades of nanocarbon research, according to a statement from the university.

The honor is a full circle moment for Wiseman, as the award is named after Weisman's long-time Rice colleague and friend, Rick Smalley, who Wiseman said helped shape his career.

“It changed my career,” Weisman said in a statement from Rice about his work with Smalley. “Everything I’ve done in the last 20 years has been an outgrowth, a consequence of that.”

Still, Weisman has earned many achievements of his own. He joined Rice's faculty in 1979 as a spectroscopist and first began working with Smalley in 1985 after Smalley's groundbreaking discovery of carbon 60, or buckyballs. The discovery proved that carbon could take on other forms and it won Smalley and his teammates the 1996 Nobel Prize in Chemistry.

Weisman and Smalley then collaborated on experiments to measure the electronic spectra of carbon 60 and carbon 70. In the early 2000s, they published two seminal nanotube studies in Science in which Weisman shared his new faster, simpler and cheaper spectrometric method of assaying nanotubes, according to Rice.

In 2004 Weisman founded a company, Applied NanoFluorescence, to commercialize the technology. The company still exists and continues to research the optical properties of carbon nanotubes.

He is also an elected fellow of the American Physical Society, the American Association for the Advancement of Science and the the Electrochemical Society (ECS) and former chair of the ECS Nanocarbons Division. The ECS will present Weisman with the 2024 Smalley Research Award in May. The award is given every two years to recognize “outstanding achievements in, or scientific contributions to, the science of fullerenes, nanotubes and carbon nanostructures.”

Earlier this month, another Rice professor won a highly competitive award. Assistant professor Amanda Marciel, the William Marsh Rice Trustee Chair of chemical and biomolecular engineering, was granted a National Science Foundation's CAREER Award that comes with $670,406 over five years to continue her research in designing branch elastomers.

The grant will also create opportunities in soft matter research for undergraduates and underrepresented scientists. Click here to learn more.

Meanwhile, another Houston-based chemist was also recently recognized for their work. Baylor College of Medicine's Livia Schiavinato Eberlin was named the 2024 recipient of the Norman Hackerman Award in Chemical Research in December.

The award from the Houston-based Welch Foundation recognizes the accomplishments of chemical scientists in Texas who are early in their careers. Eberlin will be granted $100,000 for this honor.

UH's Jian Shi recently received the NSF's CAREER award, which will dole out $500,861 in funding through February 2029. Photo via UH.edu

Houston researcher scores $500,000 award to continue on work on energy transition

zeroing in on zero emissions

A University of Houston professor and researcher is laser focused on his work within the energy transition, and National Science Foundation has taken note, awarding him over half a million dollars in funding.

Jian Shi, an assistant professor within the Cullen College of Engineering, recently received the NSF's CAREER award, which will dole out $500,861 in funding through February 2029.

The award was granted for his research, entitled “A Unified Zero-Carbon-Driven Design Framework for Accelerating Power Grid Deep Decarbonization.”

“One of the most major challenges inherent in energy transition is the cost. While reducing carbon emissions serves the best interest of society in the long run, the short-term financial burdens also need to be carefully evaluated to ensure that we have a safe, affordable, reliable and just transition for all,” Shi says in a UH news release. “This challenge has inspired me to work on the innovative framework of “ZERO-Accelerator.”

Shi's ZERO-Accelerator is focused on taking standard carbon-driven tools and integrating them into current power grid operational practices. Shi is the director and founder of SOAR, or the Smart and ZerO-Carbon Energy Analytics and Research Lab.

“It synthesizes interactions from multiple key stakeholders involved in the electricity ecosystem,” says Shi. “The framework considers how to manage carbon allowance allocation and trading for electricity producers, how to maintain a 24/7 zero-carbon power grid for power grid operators and how to enable consumers to understand their carbon footprint and participate in the zero-carbon grid operation.”

In his CAREER proposal, Shi explains that he is also contributing to training the future energy workforce. He adds that he shares this award with his colleagues.

“I believe no accomplishment is truly individual,” he says. “Rather, it is a collective triumph achieved through collaboration, support and shared dedication. As I reflect on the milestones I've reached, I am compelled to express my deepest gratitude to my esteemed colleagues whose unwavering commitment has been instrumental in not just my collective success, but our collective success as well."

Last summer, Shi mentored a UH team in the inaugural American-Made Carbon Management Collegiate Competition, hosted by the U.S. Department of Energy's Office of Fossil Energy and Carbon Management. The team, GreenHouston, took third place in the competition, securing a $5,000 cash prize.

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Engie signs deal to supply wind power for Texas data center

wind deal

Houston-based Engie North America, which specializes in generating low-carbon power, has sealed a preliminary deal to supply wind power to a Cipher Mining data center in Texas.

Under the tentative agreement, Cipher could buy as much as 300 megawatts of clean energy from one of Engie’s wind projects. The financial terms of the deal weren’t disclosed.

Cipher Mining develops and operates large data centers for cryptocurrency mining and high-performance computing.

In November, New York City-based Cipher said it bought a 250-acre site in West Texas for a data center with up to 100 megawatts of capacity. Cipher paid $4.1 million for the property.

“By pairing the data center with renewable energy, this strategic collaboration supports the use of surplus energy during periods of excess generation, while enhancing grid stability and reliability,” Engie said in a news release about the Cipher agreement.

The Engie-Cipher deal comes amid the need for more power in Texas due to several factors. The U.S. Energy Information Administration reported in October that data centers and cryptocurrency mining are driving up demand for power in the Lone Star State. Population growth is also putting pressure on the state’s energy supply.

Last year, Engie added 4.2 gigawatts of renewable energy capacity worldwide, bringing the total capacity to 46 gigawatts as of December 31. Also last year, Engie signed a new contract with Meta (Facebook's owner) and expanded its partnership with Google in the U.S. and Belgium.

Houston researchers make headway on developing low-cost sodium-ion batteries

energy storage

A new study by researchers from Rice University’s Department of Materials Science and NanoEngineering, Baylor University and the Indian Institute of Science Education and Research Thiruvananthapuram has introduced a solution that could help develop more affordable and sustainable sodium-ion batteries.

The findings were recently published in the journal Advanced Functional Materials.

The team worked with tiny cone- and disc-shaped carbon materials from oil and gas industry byproducts with a pure graphitic structure. The forms allow for more efficient energy storage with larger sodium and potassium ions, which is a challenge for anodes in battery research. Sodium and potassium are more widely available and cheaper than lithium.

“For years, we’ve known that sodium and potassium are attractive alternatives to lithium,” Pulickel Ajayan, the Benjamin M. and Mary Greenwood Anderson Professor of Engineering at Rice, said in a news release. “But the challenge has always been finding carbon-based anode materials that can store these larger ions efficiently.”

Lithium-ion batteries traditionally rely on graphite as an anode material. However, traditional graphite structures cannot efficiently store sodium or potassium energy, since the atoms are too big and interactions become too complex to slide in and out of graphite’s layers. The cone and disc structures “offer curvature and spacing that welcome sodium and potassium ions without the need for chemical doping (the process of intentionally adding small amounts of specific atoms or molecules to change its properties) or other artificial modifications,” according to the study.

“This is one of the first clear demonstrations of sodium-ion intercalation in pure graphitic materials with such stability,” Atin Pramanik, first author of the study and a postdoctoral associate in Ajayan’s lab, said in the release. “It challenges the belief that pure graphite can’t work with sodium.”

In lab tests, the carbon cones and discs stored about 230 milliamp-hours of charge per gram (mAh/g) by using sodium ions. They still held 151 mAh/g even after 2,000 fast charging cycles. They also worked with potassium-ion batteries.

“We believe this discovery opens up a new design space for battery anodes,” Ajayan added in the release. “Instead of changing the chemistry, we’re changing the shape, and that’s proving to be just as interesting.”

ExxonMobil lands major partnership for clean hydrogen facility in Baytown

power deal

Exxon Mobil and Japanese import/export company Marubeni Corp. have signed a long-term offtake agreement for 250,000 tonnes of low-carbon ammonia per year from ExxonMobil’s forthcoming facility in Baytown, Texas.

“This is another positive step forward for our landmark project,” Barry Engle, president of ExxonMobil Low Carbon Solutions, said in a news release. “By using American-produced natural gas we can boost global energy supply, support Japan’s decarbonization goals and create jobs at home. Our strong relationship with Marubeni sets the stage for delivering low-carbon ammonia from the U.S. to Japan for years to come."

The companies plan to produce low-carbon hydrogen with approximately 98% of CO2 removed and low-carbon ammonia. Marubeni will supply the ammonia mainly to Kobe Power Plant, a subsidiary of Kobe Steel, and has also agreed to acquire an equity stake in ExxonMobil’s low-carbon hydrogen and ammonia facility, which is expected to be one of the largest of its kind.

The Baytown facility aims to produce up to 1 billion cubic feet daily of “virtually carbon-free” hydrogen. It can also produce more than 1 million tons of low-carbon ammonia per year. A final investment decision is expected in 2025 that will be contingent on government policy and necessary regulatory permits, according to the release.

The Kobe Power Plant aims to co-fire low-carbon ammonia with existing fuel, and reduce CO2 emissions by Japan’s fiscal year of 2030. Marubeni also aims to assist the decarbonization of Japan’s power sector and steel manufacturing industry, chemical industry, transportation industry and various others sectors.

“Marubeni will take this first step together with ExxonMobil in the aim of establishing a global low-carbon ammonia supply chain for Japan through the supply of low-carbon ammonia to the Kobe Power Plant,” Yoshiaki Yokota, senior managing executive officer at Marubeni Corp., added in the news release. “Additionally, we aim to collaborate beyond this supply chain and strive towards the launch of a global market for low-carbon ammonia. We hope to continue to actively cooperate with ExxonMobil, with a view of utilizing this experience and relationship we have built to strategically decarbonize our power projects in Japan and Southeast Asia in the near future.”

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