Casey O'Brien
Assistant Professor
Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering
240D McCourtney Hall
574-631-5706
Current Position
Assistant Professor, Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering
Education
Ph.D., Chemical Engineering, Carnegie Mellon University
B.S., Chemical Engineering, University of Colorado at Boulder
Research Interests
Prof. O'Brien's main research interests are focused on making the chemical and petrochemical industries more energy-efficient and environmentally-friendly by developing catalytic materials that promote desirable reaction pathways and block reaction pathways that lead to environmentally harmful byproducts. Prof. O'Brien also develops membrane materials that reduce the energy input required for gas separation and purification. To develop both catalytic and membrane materials, he uses operando spectroscopic techniques to characterize their structure under realistic conditions while simultaneously evaluating their performance.
Key Words
Catalysis, Membranes, Surface Science, Spectroscopy, Mechanisms
Relevant Energy Publications
- Easa, Justin, Renxi Jin, and Casey P. O'Brien. "Evolution of surface and bulk carbon species derived from propylene and their influence on the interaction of hydrogen with palladium." Journal of Membrane Science 596 (2020): 117738.
- Jin, Renxi, Justin Easa, Dat T. Tran, and Casey P. O'Brien. "Ru-Promoted CO 2 activation for oxidative dehydrogenation of propane over chromium oxide catalyst." Catalysis Science & Technology 10, no. 6 (2020): 1769-1777.
- O’Brien, Casey P., and Ivan C. Lee. "The interaction of CO with PdCu hydrogen separation membranes: An operando infrared spectroscopy study." Catalysis Today 336 (2019): 216-222.
- Kareem, Haval, Shiyao Shan, Fang Lin, Jing Li, Zhipeng Wu, Binay Prasai, Casey P. O'Brien et al. "Evolution of surface catalytic sites on thermochemically-tuned gold–palladium nanoalloys." Nanoscale 10, no. 8 (2018): 3849-3862.
- Kareem, Haval, Shiyao Shan, Zhi-Peng Wu, Leslie Velasco, Kelli Moseman, Casey P. O'Brien, Dat T. Tran et al. "Catalytic oxidation of propane over palladium alloyed with gold: an assessment of the chemical and intermediate species." Catalysis Science & Technology 8, no. 23 (2018): 6228-6240.
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