Ling Fei
University of Louisiana at Lafayette, LA·Engineering
Avoiding catastrophic climate change will require cutting carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions and removing billions of tons of CO2 that are already in the air and oceans. A useful approach is to capture CO2 and turn it into something valuable.
- Fields
Engineering
Chemistry
Materials Science
- Topics
carbon capture and utilization
CO2 conversion
CO2 reduction
- Grants
- 1 known grant, last ended Sep 2026
What they work on
- Develop molten carbonate fuel cells with three-dimensional electrodes that concentrate CO2 while producing electricity, aiming for better performance and stability.
- Develop an energy storage system that uses CO2 while storing electric energy.
- Convert CO2 into high-value chemicals such as ethylene (C2H4) and ethanol.
- Assess the quality and cost of manufacturing these components and chemicals through process modeling, AI analysis of microscope images, and techno-economic analysis.
More about the research
This collaborative institute, TRIMMing CO2, links the University of Louisiana at Lafayette, New Mexico State University, the University of New Mexico, West Virginia University, and two national laboratories. Together they are developing manufacturing processes and basic understanding for CO2 capture and use.
Why it matters
Technologies that capture CO2 while producing electricity, store energy using CO2, or turn CO2 into chemicals such as ethylene and ethanol could help industries cut emissions and make captured carbon worth something. Techno-economic analysis and scale-up work with industry partners aim to show whether these processes could be manufactured affordably.
Known grants
From NIH and NSF research grants. Labs often have other funding we can't see.
Closest labs
Mohammad Rahimi
University of Houston, TX·Engineering·Early-career
Engineer soft liquid-liquid interfaces between two immiscible electrolyte solutions that separate CO2 electrochemically without costly ion-selective membranes and with less sensitivity to oxygen gas.
Zhange Feng
University of Nevada-Las Vegas, NV·Chemistry
Gather preliminary data on electrochemical energy storage and electrochemical CO2 reduction, which turns carbon dioxide into other chemicals, as groundwork for a full research center.
Pratik Dholabhai
Rochester Institute of Technology, NY·Materials Science·Early-career
Build a multiscale computational framework for the CaO + CO2 ⇌ CaCO3 looping cycle, and validate it with atomic-resolution and in situ gas-cell transmission electron microscopy, which images reactions as they happen.
The school
University of Louisiana at Lafayette: 1 labs on PI Pages, $255M a year on research, 88 research doctorates a year.
Reach out
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