Stuart Licht, Professor Emeritus, GW Department of Chemistry

The Department of Chemistry Presents: Stuart Licht, Professor Emeritus, GW Department of Chemistry

A major impediment to climate mitigation is the high cost of carbon capture. A chemistry discovered at GWU addresses this barrier by, rather than cost, transforming CO₂ into revenue-generating products. This C2CNT® (CO₂ to Carbon Nanomaterial Technology) process converts CO₂ into high-purity carbon nanotubes, carbon nano-onions, graphene, and other graphene nanocarbons (GNCs), enabling low-cost nanocarbons with the extraordinary properties of graphene tailored by the distinct shapes of these carbon allotropes.

In C2CNT, a carbon-rich molten carbonate electrolyte splits CO₂ in a single electrochemical step, producing pure GNCs via controlled transition-metal-nucleated growth. The properties of these GNCs arise from graphene’s exceptional strength, high electrical conductivity, light absorption, charge storage, solid lubrication, and electronic and catalytic activity. For example, carbon nanotubes exhibit the highest known tensile strength and light absorption.
Selective control of electrochemical parameters enables the production of distinctive graphene symmetries, including 0D (carbon nano-onions), 1D (magnetic, doped, or bamboo carbon nanotubes), and 2D morphologies (nanoplatelets and nanoscaffolds). Built from the same fundamental graphene structure as graphite, which has a geologic lifetime, these nanocarbons permanently sequester transformed CO₂, mitigating global warming. Their utility has been demonstrated in polymers, buckypapers, and microwave-driven plasma generation.

Originally developed in 2015 on 0.0005 m² electrodes, C2CNT has been scaled to >1 m² electrodes, adapted to new low-cost strontium carbonate chemistry, and deployed in 100T(tonne-per-year) CO₂ removal modules. A MegaT annual decarbonization process design using series-connected 1000-tonne modules has been established.

 

BIO

Stuart Licht is a Professor Emeritus of Chemistry at George Washington University in Washington, DC USA, and is the founder of C2CNT LLC (Venice, FL, USA) with the website C2CNT.com. Prof. Licht’s work focuses on climate change, renewable energy and fundamental physical/analytical chemistry. He is a Fellow of the Electrochemical Society, former Program Director at the United States National Science Foundation, former Chemistry Department Chair at the University of Massachusetts, former Chaired Professor at both Clark University and the Technion Institute of Technology, and the recipient of numerous awards. His postdoc, PhD and undergraduate studies were respectively at MIT, the Weizmann Institute of Science and Wesleyan University.

Prof. Licht’s research encompassing ~1000 publications, patents and related contributions includes the discovery of the CO2 to carbon nanomaterials CCS and DAC decarbonization chemistry, STEP solar energy conversion, of the "solar cell that works in the dark," solution phase optimized and multiple bandgap photoelectrochemistry, advanced nanomaterials, and super-iron, aluminum-sulfur, VB2, and molten air batteries.  Additionally, his group has made important strides in analytical methodologies and the determination of a range of physical and chemical constants.