Webinar title: Plasma-catalyzed synthesis of fuels and chemical products
Speaker: Xin Tu
Webinar time: December 11, 2025 13:30
Venue: Room 231, New Environmental Building
Inviter: Naiqiang Yan，Haomiao Xu
Abstract:
Fossil fuels continue to dominate China's energy mix, but their conventional utilization involves high-temperature, high-pressure catalytic processes characterized by high energy consumption, low selectivity, catalyst deactivation, and environmental pollution. Achieving the dual carbon goals and advancing green transformation now hinges on the development of sustainable new energy technologies. Atmospheric pressure non-thermal plasma can bypass thermodynamic equilibrium constraints, facilitating reactions that are challenging under conventional conditions to occur under milder conditions. In recent years, the integration of non-thermal plasma with heterogeneous catalytic technology has shown significant potential. The synergistic interaction between non-thermal plasma and catalysts effectively enhances catalytic processes at low temperatures, improving catalyst activity and stability. This approach boosts plasma-assisted catalytic performance in terms of reaction conversion rates, product selectivity, and energy efficiency. Additionally, plasma technology offers rapid response and quick start-stop capabilities, making it well-suited for adapting to the intermittent and highly variable nature of renewable electricity. This provides innovative solutions for distributed chemical production and chemical energy storage. This report will highlight the latest advancements and progress in plasma technology, a highly promising emerging field, in the synthesis of fuels and chemical products (including synthetic ammonia, carbon dioxide conversion, and methane activation). It will also address the challenges and future prospects of applying plasma technology in these areas, offering insights to support the realization of the "dual carbon" goals.
About the speaker:
Professor Tu Xin, Chair of Plasma Catalysis at the University of Liverpool, UK, has dedicated his career to fundamental and applied research in plasma catalytic technology for efficient energy conversion and environmental pollution control. With an interdisciplinary and international research background, he has published over 260 papers in prestigious international journals, including *Nat. Rev. Mater.*, *Nat. Rev. Clean Technol.*, *Chem.*, *Nat. Commun.*, *JACS*, and *Angew. Chem.* (Google Citations >19,000, H-index 79). Professor Tu Xin is a globally recognized scholar in plasma catalysis.
In 2024, he received the William Crookes Prize, jointly awarded by the European Physical Society and the Institute of Physics. In 2025, he was named a Clarivate Highly Cited Researcher. Professor Tu has organized numerous international conferences and summer schools, serving as conference chair on seven occasions and delivering over 130 invited presentations at major international conferences. In 2019, Professor Tu Xin led the compilation of the 2020 Plasma Catalysis Technology Roadmap, co-authored by 16 leading experts in the field. This roadmap outlines the future development directions for plasma catalysis, a transformative technology in energy and environmental applications. As principal investigator, Professor Tu Xin has led and participated in over forty projects funded by organizations such as the UK Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC), Horizon Europe, Horizon 2020, the Royal Society, the Royal Academy of Engineering, the British Council, the UK Department for Transport, the UK National Nuclear Laboratory, the US Department of Energy, and various industries. The total funding for these projects exceeds £20 million, with Professor Tu personally securing over £6 million.