Faglige nøgleord: Energy, climate change, hydrogen energy, nanoscience, photocatalysis.
Oplæg tilgængeligt på: Engelsk og spansk
My name is Irantzu and I am from Basque Country, in the north of Spain. I finished science high school in my hometown and afterwards I moved to Barcelona for my Bachelor's degree in Nanoscience and Nanotechnology. During my bachelor's, I spent several months in Switzerland, first for an internship in my third year, and at a different university for my bachelor's final project. After graduating, I moved back to Basque Country for a master's in Engineering of Advanced materials. I did my master's final project in a batties research company in Basque Country, where I focused on synthesizing and testing new materials. During my master's I came for the first time to DTU, where I did a 3 months internship at DTU Nanolab. When the internship ended, I decided that I wanted to come back to Denmark, to DTU.
Although during my bachelor's I wasn't sure if I wanted to do a PhD, my master's experience in labs convinced me that research was the right path for me. So I started looking for PhD opportunities at DTU and I found my current project, which perfectly matched with my interests (energy, sustainability, and nanomaterials). Since I was a kid I have been really concerned about environment, and during my studies I decided that I wanted to contribute to solutions that could make a real difference.
My PhD project focuses on producing hydrogen using only water, sunlight, and nanoparticles that help the reaction. Hydrogen is a great energy carrier, since it can store a lot of energy in a small weight and it is easy to transport. The problem with the current hydrogen production is that it needs fossil fuels and releases CO2, so using that type of hydrogen is not really solving our dependence on fossil fuels or reduce our CO2 emissions. So in our project we split the water in O2 and H2 atoms though a photocatalytic reaction. For this reaction to happen we need a light source and also a material that helps drive the reaction, which in our case is nanoparticles.
In my presentation I will briefly introduce the current energy problem and explain why hydrogen can be part of the solution, but only if we learn how to produce it in a truly green way. I will include some questions to make the students involved and I will also bring a small reactor, where we synthesize our nanoparticles, so they can see the equipment in real life.