Prof. Nathan Lewis of Caltech: Producing Liquid Fuel from Sunlight and Water
Dinner and drinks are included. Many thanks to loyal club member Bob Barre, Ph.D. '53 for arranging this event.
Please report to the front desk at 555 13th Street. You will be escorted to the Fulbright Room on the 13th floor for the evening's program which will begin with a full dinner including grilled salmon, brown rice, seasonal vegetable, salad, dessert, coffee, wine, beer, soft drinks, fruit juices, etc.
Professor Lewis addressed the HCW in December. Quoting the U.N. World Energy report, he indicated world yearly energy consumption to be approximately 14 trillion thermal watts, which is projected to increase to 50 trillion watts by 2050. Providing so much additional carbon free energy would require producing as much energy as is produced today by coal, oil, gas and nuclear combined plus ten thousand of today's type of nuclear reactors. Since the world lacks sufficient uranium for such purpose, breeder reactors would be required. Since these produce plutonium, the world would be awash with nuclear bomb plutonium.
In this second presentation, Professor Lewis will discuss the production of liquid fuel using sunlight, water, and carbon dioxide. This process may be thought of as artificial photosynthesis. In order to find a replacement for coal, oil and gas as the basic fuel source for powering the economy, the U.S. Department of Energy has made a $122 million grant to a number of public and private research entities. Professor Lewis leads this research effort. A worldwide effort to establish such power source is supported with additional an $220 million provided by: Exxon-Mobil, GE, Schlumberger and Toyota companies. Separate efforts are being made by other domestic and international scientific and financial sources fostering artificial photosynthesis energy research.
This effort is caused by the U.S. Department of Energy's determination that the continuity of industrial civilization cannot survive continued dependence on coal, oil, and gas as its basic energy source. Professor Lewis' lecture will elaborate on the inadequacy of other energy sources for powering the planet. He and his associates have already produced, on a laboratory scale, liquid fuel from water powered only by sunlight.
Biography of Professor Lewis:
Professor Nathan Lewis, the George L. Argyros Professor of Chemistry, has been on the faculty at the California Institute of Technology since 1988 and has served as Professor since 1991. He has also served as the Principal Investigator of the Beckman Institute Molecular Materials Resource Center at Caltech since 1992, and is the Principal Investigator of the Joint Center for Artificial Photosynthesis, the Energy Innovation Hub in Fuels from Sunlight. From 1981 to 1986, he was on the faculty at Stanford, as an assistant professor from 1981 to 1985 and as a tenured Associate Professor from 1986 to 1988. Dr. Lewis received his Ph.D. in Chemistry from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Dr. Lewis has been an Alfred P. Sloan Fellow, a Camille and Henry Dreyfus Teacher-Scholar, and a Presidential Young Investigator. He received the Fresenius Award in 1990, the ACS Award in Pure Chemistry in 1991, the Orton Memorial Lecture award in 2003, the Princeton Environmental Award in 2003 and the Michael Faraday Medal of the Royal Society of Electrochemistry in 2008. He is currently the Editor-in-Chief of the Royal Society of Chemistry journal, Energy & Environmental Science. He has published over 300 papers and has supervised approximately 60 graduate students and postdoctoral associates.
His reseach interests include artificial photosynthesis and electronic noses.
Technical details of these research topics focus on light-induced electron transfer reactions, both at surfaces and in transition metal complexes, surface chemistry and photochemistry of semiconductor/liquid interfaces, novel uses of conducting organic polymers and polymer/conductor composites, and development of sensor arrays that use pattern recognition algorithms to identify odorants, mimicking the mammalian olfaction process.
Cost: $35. for HCW and One Ivy Members;
$45. for Nonmembers.
Space permitting walk- in fee: $55.
Your patronage of this event supports our community service activities.
Harvard Alumni, Associates and Students: Login using your HAA username and password.
· If you have not created your HAA username and password, please see our registration page.
· If you do not remember your HAA username and password, you can retrieve them using our login retrieval page.
· If you cannot retrieve your post.harvard login, please email the HAA help desk athaa_alumnihelp@harvard.edu or call 800-823-2478 or 617-496-0559. For all other questions or to register over the phone for this event, please call the Harvard Club of Washington, DC at 202-337-1300 or contact webmaster@harvard-dc.org
Non-alumni (including widows, parents and other guests): you will need to sign in as a Non-Alumni Guest.”