Hey Blog!

Week 2 has been eventful, I feel like I’m learning more and more every day about my lab, but luckily, it’s starting to make sense to me as I’ve been independently working on projects.

Dr. Haotian Wang’s lab focuses on utilizing CO2/CO reduction reactions to form high-purity acetic acid while reducing both carbon intensity and energy consumption. Transferring as an Earth, Environmental, and Planetary Science major, I feel like this lab directly correlates to the lab work I’ll do as an undergraduate student here at Rice and have background knowledge in electrochemistry.

This reduction reaction process involves a lot of electrochemistry, which I’m unfamiliar with. Still, I’m currently reading about it to see exactly how it applies to what I’ll be working with – flow cells with a porous solid electrolyte (PSE) reactor.

So far in the lab, I’ve been able to synthesize catalysts (mixing a bunch of chemicals together), spray coat the catalyst onto a Gas Diffusion Layer (GDL), and learn how to assemble and prepare a flow cell (lots of pumps, wires, voltages, and a GC?)

Overall, I’m starting to feel more comfortable in the lab, what my project is exactly about, and growing independence, I thoroughly enjoy in the lab. I can’t wait to learn each step of the process so I can work on new experiments by myself. My mentor, Wei Ping, has been an extreme help with his expertise and patience in teaching me. He’s very easy-going and I value his time. I also value the other REU interns’ time as everyone has been extremely supportive and welcoming, and I’ll be sad once these 10 weeks are up!

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Thanks for reading, until next week!