Tag: Dave Tyler

Design and Synthesis of a Coordination Complex for Dinitrogen Rejection from Natural Gas

Presenter: Nicholas Rinehart

Mentor: Dave Tyler, Chemistry

Oral Presentation

Major: Biochemistry

Natural gas provided 28% of total energy consumption during 2014 in the United States. Nearly 20% of current natural gas wells are too contaminated with nitrogen gas, making them unsuitable for use in natural gas burning equipment. Current methods of decontaminating natural gas are too expensive for small gas fields. A method for more cost-effective decontamination of natural gas is needed. The Tyler Lab has demonstrated that a coordination complex can be used to decontaminate natural gas by selectively removing nitrogen gas from the mixture. For true economic feasibility, a new coordination complex has been designed. The newly designed coordination complex will be discussed in terms of both the design and synthesis of the complex.

Design and Synthesis of a Nitrogen Binding Molecule for Natural Gas Purification

Presenter: Nicholas Rinehart

Faculty Mentor: Dave Tyler, Justin Barry

Presentation Type: Oral

Primary Research Area: Science

Major: Chemistry

Funding Source: Presidential Undergraduate Research Scholarship, UROP, 5000; SAACS Scholarship, SAACS, 500

Natural gas provided 28% of total energy consumption during 2014 in the United States. Nearly 20% of domestic natural gas wells are contaminated with nitrogen gas, making them unsuitable for use in natural gas burning equipment. Current methods of purification have a large cost, so they are often infeasible. A more feasible purification method is necessary to reduce the cost of purifying contaminated natural gas reserves and dependence on expensive imported natural gas. The Tyler Lab has demonstrated that a certain type of molecule called a coordination complex, which in this case contains phosphine ligands and a central iron atom, can serve as a nitrogen gas sorbent. Since the previous coordination complex bound nitrogen, but degraded too quickly to be applied in industry, current work is focused on creating a longer lived version of this molecule by redesigning the ligands bound to the central iron atom. Progress on the synthesis of this new coordination complex will be presented.