Nathaniel Kramer: Brewing up a career he loves
Part 2 of a 5-part series about undergraduates pursuing
research and career goals over summer vacation
Would you like to work in the brewing industry? Nathaniel Kramer would. And as a chemical engineer – for whom a key directive is to make processes more efficient – he has a good chance of landing the job of his dreams.
This summer, Nathaniel, whose faculty mentor is Umit Ozkan, joins six other Ohio State chemical engineering students who are pursuing research projects as part of The Ohio State University Undergraduate Summer Research Program: Eileen Elliott (mentor: Jessica Winter), Nathaniel Olson (mentor: Nicholas Brunelli), John Osburn (mentor: Daniel Dotson), Ivan Pires (mentor: Andre Palmer), Mitch Raith (mentor: David Wood), and Bradley Schockman (mentor: Yiying Wu).
All students will be presenting their research at the annual Undergraduate Research Office Fall Forum on September 15 in the Buckeye Reading Room at Thompson Library from 11 am - 4 pm.
More economical and environmentally-friendly ethylene production
Nathaniel currently works in Professor Umit Ozkan’s group on electrocatalysts for oxidative dehydrogenation of ethane.
“Basically, we are using a fuel cell in reverse, applying a current to the cell in order to get a favorable reaction to occur,” Nathaniel explained.
“In this case, we want to convert ethane—which is not very useful industrially—to ethylene, which is a significant ‘building block’ molecule for chemical syntheses. Ethylene is just two CH2 groups attached with a double bond, so it is useful as a precursor for many organic molecules, since it can be used to form larger carbon chains or have functional groups attached to it. The most common use is for polymers,” Nathaniel said.
Nathaniel’s challenge: Current methods to produce ethylene include steam cracking, which requires high temperatures and thus large amounts of energy, while the oxidative dehydrogenation method is both less energy-intensive and more selective than steam cracking. Thus, his challenge is to find an effective catalyst for oxidative dehydrogenation of ethane, resulting in both economic and environmental benefits.
His project: Synthesize a series of previously untested catalysts, including niobium-doped strontium titanates and lanthanum-doped strontium cobaltates. Later, he will conduct packed-bed tests of these catalysts to determine their activity, followed by conductivity tests on the most effective catalysts in order to further determine their suitability for electrocatalytic applications.
What’s next? Nathaniel plans to attend graduate school, possibly switching to more of a bio-related focus. His dream job would be to work for a larger-scale craft brewer like Lagunitas Brewing Company or Great Lakes Brewing Company.
