Professor Al Weimer

Three undergraduate researchers from Professor ’s team received national poster awards at the 2024 American Institute of Chemical Engineers (AIChE) annual meeting, held Oct. 28-31 in San Diego. 

Hermann Klein-Hessling Barrientos, a chemical engineering senior, and Jessica Connell, a chemical engineering junior, each took home first-place, Barrientos in the "Catalysis and Reaction" category and Connell in "Materials Engineering and Science." Nathan Smith, a chemical engineering senior, took home third place in the "Separations" category.

The achievement places them among top undergraduate researchers in chemical engineering, selected from over 400 presenters and judged by approximately 100 professionals.

"Through focused team meetings, our students are encouraged to delve into the 'why' questions that underlie their research—a critical step for effectively communicating their work and standing out in a competitive setting," said Weimer, a Melvin E. and Virginia M. Clark professor of chemical and biological engineering. 

Students are also coached to deliver concise, one-minute presentations, allowing them to present confidently and capture the interest of their audience, he said. PhD mentors assist the undergraduates with the development of their posters, offering support with presentation techniques and strategies to maximize their impact.

Additionally, attending the AIChE meeting also allows undergraduate students to network with professionals and peers, often leading to job offers or graduate school opportunities.

"This exposure opens doors for future career paths," he said. 

Over the past 25 years, Weimer has mentored roughly 125 undergraduate students through independent study and internships, with more than 25 of them going on to earn PhDs, MDs or other professional degrees. Each year, he supports undergraduate participation in the AIChE annual meeting with assistance from the Undergraduate Research Opportunities Program (UROP) or the Discovery Learning Apprenticeship Program (DLA). 

Weimer's research spans diverse areas of engineering, focusing on particle surface modification by atomic layer deposition and high-temperature chemical reaction engineering using concentrated sunlight.

Catalysis and Reaction 

First Place:  Hermann Klein-Hessling Barrientos, senior, chemical engineering

Title:  “Optimizing Tungsten Powder Fluidization:  Applications for Atomic Layer Deposition"

PhD student mentor: Davis Conklin

Materials Engineering and Sciences

First Place: Jessica Connell, junior, chemical engineering

Title: ���ron-aluminate Reticulated Porous Ceramic Fabrication for use in Solar Thermochemistry”

PhD student mentor: Linnea Helenius

Separations

Third Place:  Nathan Smith, senior, chemical engineering

Title:  “Additive Manufacturing Plant-derived Char Meshes for Point-source CO2 Capture”

PhD student mentor: Katarina Odak

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The University of ŷ���ڱ���Ƶ Boulder’s Weimer Lab has introduced an efficient and economical method to use renewable energy to produce fuel, opening doors to clean and sustainable energy sources for a wide array of industries, including transportation, steelmaking and ammonia production.

The groundbreaking study, detailed in the high-impact journal Joule, outlines a thermochemical process using solar energy to derive either hydrogen gas from water or carbon-neutral fuels from water and carbon dioxide. The new paper marks the first exploration of running this process at elevated pressure, said Kent Warren, one of the paper’s lead authors and a research associate in the Department of Chemical and Biological Engineering. 

Their findings indicated that for specific materials, elevating the pressure not only accelerated the reaction rate but also significantly increased the amount of fuel produced.

“This work is, thus far, the most significant accomplishment of my professional career,” he said.

All of the paper’s authors are affiliated with ŷ���ڱ���Ƶ Boulder. Professor Al Weimer is the principal investigator, and Warren and PhD student Justin Tran are the first authors. Other authors include Dragan Mejic, instrument shop supervisor; Robert L. Anderson, senior professional research associate; Lucas Jones; Dana S. Hauschulz, fabrication advisor; and Carter Wilson, an undergraduate research assistant. 

In contrast to electrolysis, an alternative method attracting commercial attention for the production of green hydrogen, the researchers used heat – not electricity – to split water. Warren said the thermochemical process has the potential to be more economically viable. The method eliminates the need for scarce, rare-earth-element-containing materials and, unlike electrolysis, can rely on well-established engineering principles to be easily scaled.

The researchers demonstrated that, by simply elevating pressure, low-cost ŷ���ڱ���Ƶ Boulder-developed iron-aluminate materials can more than double hydrogen production, a notable feat considering such yields are nearly 1,000 percent greater than what the current benchmark thermochemical approach can achieve.

The same process can also be used to split carbon dioxide into carbon monoxide. It’s significant because hydrogen and carbon monoxide combined form syngas, the building block for gasoline, diesel and other liquid hydrocarbon fuels. Since carbon dioxide is sourced from the atmosphere or industrial emitters, the resulting fuel – when used – is carbon neutral, contributing only as much emissions to the atmosphere as required for its production.

“The way I like to think about it is some day when you go to the pump you’ll have, for example, unleaded, super unleaded and ethanol options, and then an additional option being solar fuel, where the fuel is derived from sunlight, water and carbon dioxide,” Warren said. “Our hope is that it will be cost-competitive to the fuels sourced from the ground.”

This research was supported by Shell Oil and the National Science Foundation.

Photo caption: From left to right, Justin Tran, Professor Al Weimer and Kent Warren stand in the Weimer Lab.

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Paul Lichty’s journey from PhD student to running one of the world’s top atomic layer deposition (ALD) companies was shaped by his time at ŷ���ڱ���Ƶ Boulder. Today, Lichty (MechEngr BS‘06, ChemEngr PhD‘11) is the CEO of Forge Nano, overseeing the development of the Thornton, ŷ���ڱ���Ƶ-based company’s cutting-edge nano coating technology. 

Nano coating, applying a thin protective layer at the nanoscale (with particles about one billionth of a meter in size) on various surfaces greatly improves the durability, performance and lifespan of coated objects and unlocks material characteristics not found in nature. 

“The analogy we use is M&M's — their candy shells prevent the chocolate from melting in your hand,” Lichty said. “We coat materials at a very small single-atom level, and that allows the underlying material to not melt or corrode.”

ALD technology is most utilized for the semiconductor industry, however, Lichty said Forge Nano stands out globally as the sole company that has extended ALD beyond the semiconductor domain. Its technology is most notably used to optimize battery characteristics including range, safety and cycle life, with significant implications for longer range electric vehicle batteries that require less frequent charging.

Susan Glairon sat down with Lichty to explore the impact of ŷ���ڱ���Ƶ Boulder on the growth of Forge Nano and his life today.

How did you go from PhD student to CEO of one of the world’s top ALD companies?
While attending ŷ���ڱ���Ƶ Boulder for my undergraduate degree in mechanical engineering, I learned Professor Alan Weimer's lab in the Department of Chemical and Biological Engineering was doing some really cool stuff with renewable energy. I asked Al if I could work in his lab, and he hired me. I stayed for a year after graduating and then I pursued a PhD in chemical engineering to keep working on my research. So I went to ŷ���ڱ���Ƶ for a very long time!

Within Al's group, we had several focuses. One was “atomic layer deposition” (ALD), which is what we do at Forge Nano; other projects concentrated on solar energy for production of green hydrogen and biofuels. 

As a PhD student, I helped start a biofuels company called Sun Drop Fuels. After I graduated, I worked for Sun Drop helping with the R&D group and learned a lot about entrepreneurship. Sun Drop raised a lot of money. It had a really interesting technology, but suffered from gasoline prices dropping from $4 per gallon to $1.75, or whatever the low was, which killed off a whole crop of biofuel companies.

At the same time we had also developed and patented an idea for scaling up the ALD process and established a separate company, Forge Nano. While working at Sun Drop, I spent nights and weekends in my garage building a prototype of the ALD reactor and running chemical processes. Eventually we started winning some grants and getting development customers. I jumped to full time to become the CEO of Forge Nano, and I've been here ever since.

How exactly did you grow the company?
We're at about 100 employees now, but getting a company going always takes longer than you’d like. We bootstrapped the whole thing for about four years working on it part time. My partner, David King (ChemEngr PhD ‘08) and I got it going to a point where we could work full time. We then grew to about eight employees, just selling development services and equipment, hustling the entire time. Then one of our customers decided they liked what we were doing, and that's when we raised our first funding round. Ever since we started taking on investments, we've been able to grow. Just recently we closed onfinancing round, $50 million led by Korea’s Hanwha with participation from Orion Infrastructure Capital (OIC), Catalus Capital, Ascent Funds, and existing investors and that's going to help us build a battery factory that integrates our technology. So we have many irons in the fire. 

When you were in Professor Al Weimer’s lab, did you envision Forge Nano would get this big? 
I joined Al's lab because I wanted to do something that helps humans transition from unsustainable energy sources; I never envisioned starting an ALD company. But once I understood that our ALD technology allows for the best materials engineering that humans are capable of—because we do it at a single atom—I realized we could change lots of products to make them safer, cheaper and more efficient. For instance, with batteries we can achieve a 20 percent increase in range, enhance safety and prolong their lifespans so that people will be able to buy electric cars and not have range anxiety. 

It's difficult to think of anything else I could have done that would have as big an impact as this company.

What other products utilize this nano coating technology?
The biggest and most well-known commercial application is in the semiconductor industry, and a lot of sensors and chips have this ALD process on them. Our company is the only one in the world that's taken ALD outside the semiconductor space. Now we have commercial products in solid state lighting and phosphors, magnetics, energetics and medical devices. We end up doing work in all kinds of cool and crazy applications where they just need better materials design.

Some customers buy the systems and coat their products at their factories — we have about 90 coating machines installed globally. But if a company doesn't make enough product to justify buying a system, we can toll coat and upgrade their product on our equipment, and then ship it back to them. We probably have the largest ALD coating facility in the world.  

It seems like pursuing your PhD in chemical engineering at ŷ���ڱ���Ƶ was life-changing.
It was! I met a lot of really smart and hard working people at ŷ���ڱ���Ƶ who helped push me. My wife is also an alumna — we met at ŷ���ڱ���Ƶ Boulder.

I was on ŷ���ڱ���Ƶ Boulder’s student council for five years, which is probably longer than almost anybody. My campus involvement provided me with not just technical experiences, but organizational leadership. There's plenty of opportunities at ŷ���ڱ���Ƶ Boulder if you look. A lot of universities now have venture groups where they help students and faculty get companies started. That didn't exist at ŷ���ڱ���Ƶ when we did this 12 years ago, but it does now. 

I alway tell people, regardless of how the football team is doing, ŷ���ڱ���Ƶ Boulder engineering is always one of top-10 funded engineering colleges in the country. It's an excellent place to get your degree and can be a springboard to much more.

What is your vision for the future? 
We're a company that can upgrade almost any physical product you can imagine. We're going to keep trying to grow the company and change the world until it stops being fun. And then we'll figure out what else to do.

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Professor Alan Weimer of chemical and biological engineering received a three-year Chevron USA Inc. award for $904,500 for “Development of Si Encapsulated Phase Change Material for High Temperature Thermal Storage.”

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Four researchers from the Weimer Research Group received poster contest awards at the American Institute of Chemical Engineers annual meeting, this year held in Phoenix, Nov. 11-14. 

Alan Weimer, Melvin E. and Virginia M. Clark professor of chemical and biological engineering, said his students have been presenting papers at the AIChE meetings for years, but this was the most awards that his students have ever brought home at one conference.  This year also marks the fourth consecutive year that Weimer's PhD students have received the Particle Technology Forum Poster Award.

"I am extremely proud of the work that my students do," Weimer said. "I'm especially proud of the collaborative team effort among all of them—supporting each other, practicing talks together, making improvements with every 'dry run' and being able to answer the critical 'why questions.' "

With more than 400 students presenting and about 100 judges, AIChE's annual meeting is the largest forum for Chemical Engineering undergraduates to present their research activity to the professional community at large.

Award winners

Graduate PhD Students
Hailey Louhde-Woolard – Particle Technology Forum
“Manufacture of Complex-Shaped Tungsten Materials Via Atomic Layer Deposition and Direct Ink Writing”

Justin Tran – Catalysis and Reaction Engineering Division
���mpact of Pressure on Fuel Production via Redox”

Undergraduate Students
Samantha Harshberger – Materials Science and Engineering Division
���nvestigation of Particle Atomic Layer Deposition of Metal Precursor on Silica Supports for Catalytic Decomposition of Methane”

Hermann Klein-Jessling – Materials Science and Engineering Division
“Solution-Based Rhenium Doping to Facilitate Additive Manufacturing of Complex Tungsten Parts”

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Chris Stanton, Sara Horton and Sherri Zeller presented their findings from the 1999 course.

This year marks the 25th anniversary of the revamped and retooled Chemical Engineering Design Project course — a class (re)designed to provide seniors with practical problem-solving experience and foster stronger ties to industry. 

Industry liaisons — often department alumni  — work with seniors on chemical process, design and economic analysis in the context of real-world projects. Students provide bi-weekly letter reports, two midterm oral presentations, a final 45-minute presentation at the liaison’s facility and a written final design report based on their experience. 

“When we started, the course was in disarray and many students were apparently complaining – enough that the external advisory committee recommended that the department do an about-face and move away from the standard AIChE capstone problem,” Melvin E. and Virginia M. Clark Professor Alan Weimer said. “They recommended bringing in industry projects. In all honesty, this had a lot to do with hiring me on as a professor after I spent 16 years in industry.” 

Weimer — who still teaches the course — saw an opportunity to modify the existing class, opting to connect students with industry professionals and to provide assignments that would lead to real-world outcomes that students could draw upon in job interviews. Since the course’s conversion to an industry-facing model, over 100 organizations have participated, including private companies and government laboratories. 

“We were the first department in the college to use external liaisons and industry projects, providing students with relevant learning opportunities,” Weimer said. “Most of the industry liaisons are now past students.  It was difficult getting started in 1997, but now we routinely have alumni volunteering to give back to the department and to be involved in our students' education. We have had as many as 35 different projects in one semester.”

New vision, new opportunities (and new software) 

The first industry liaison, Dena Lund (ChemEngr’89), now the president of Anvil Corporation, collaborated with Professor Weimer in the spring 1997 course. Lund recalled her own senior design project as a difficult, confusing experience. When Weimer approached her to develop a new, industry-focused, project-based approach, she was excited to participate. 

Weimer had recently received brand-new, Windows-based thermodynamic modeling software, which he had laying around his office. Lund had a burst of inspiration. 

“’How about if I design a project around the software and a couple of student teams can learn how to use it and make a recommendation back to the department on its value?’” she asked. Weimer approved the idea, and the student recommendations led to the department adopting the software.  

“Seeing students work in teams on real-life projects with industry professionals is energizing,” Lund said of her time as a liaison. “They get to be creative, apply all their skills, collaborate and gain experience with real-world work. The presentation sessions prepare them to showcase their efforts and respond to live questions. The other students get exposure to all the different projects and learn about a variety of engineering applications.” 

Because Lund has such confidence in the course’s efficacy, she has sought out and hired several department graduates who have completed the class. 

“By the time these students graduate, they are prepared to contribute,” she said. 

Lund’s involvement with the program was her way of giving back. 

��� was an engineer because of the department, and I have enjoyed a successful career and raised a family,” she said. “Helping students with that extra effort, by being a liaison and giving some guidance and reinforcement of skills was my way of helping students transition to a career in engineering in a way that was better than my experience.”

Course graduates to industry liaisons 

Ann Colwell (ChemEngr’97) is a former student who transitioned to industry partner. She now works as a venture executive at ExxonMobil.

“Over the course of my career, the tools and valuable insights that I was able to develop through this course provided me the foundation for success and a passion to stay involved as an industry project sponsor,” Colwell said. “While engineering students go on to many different types of careers, it is inspiring to see the students innovate solutions that exceed the design basis for their projects, including opportunities to apply concepts for safety and energy efficiency.” 

Colwell said that within the course’s project teams, she sees emerging engineers developing an attention for detail and a desire to test boundaries in a process that connects them to the industries of which they will soon be a part.

"Courses like the senior capstone design class provide a foundation that ensures the students entering our industries today are equipped to transform and evolve sustainable energy solutions for the next 100 years,” she said. 

Bill Perry (ChemEngr’98) is the owner and operator of Myrmix Pharma Solutions. Perry completed the course as a student and returned to teach a section after extensive project management experience in industry.  

“Every year, I am impressed by the students’ ability to prepare effective slides and present in a clean, polished manner,” Perry said. “Their presentation skills reflect the experiences they have had not only in the senior design course, but throughout the department’s curriculum.” 

Perry said one of the course's strengths is how it encourages students to make critical decisions on whether or how to limit the scope of their projects. 

“Deciding where to make simplifying assumptions and where to dive deeply into a technical assessment is a real-life challenge they will face in their careers as engineers,” he said. “This is the most valuable project management skill the students learn from the senior design course.” 

Jake Carrier (ChemEngr’13) is a senior process engineer at DCP Midstream. 

“The course exposed me to real-world design considerations and made the academic concepts less abstract,” Carrier said. “Through the networking opportunities afforded by the course, I was able to get my first job in consulting, which was a career path I had no knowledge of and had not considered. This ended up being a great jumping off point for me that could not have happened without this course.” 

As a liaison for the course on behalf of DCP Midstream, Carrier gets to provide industry connections and mentorship to current students. 

“Engineering is an apprenticeship, and my goal is to provide the students with some of the skills needed to transfer their academic knowledge into the practical,” he said. ���n an increasingly lean profession, it is incredibly important to provide this mentorship to young engineers to ensure that the knowledge gained over many years is not lost.” 

Carrier’s focus is on helping students break complex problems down to first principles of chemical engineering, encouraging creativity and cleverness in how they approach their projects. 

“Congratulations to Professor Weimer on 25 years of helping to better prepare young engineers for a career in industry,” Carrier said. ��� wouldn’t be where I am today without your help and guidance – truly.” 

Tunkie Saunders (ChemBioEngr’18) is a senior chemical engineering manager at Redwood Materials. 

“Senior design was fundamental to my growth and career trajectory as an engineer,” Saunders said. “Before the class, chemical engineering was a collection of theories and textbook problems. Going through the class ties the curriculum together.” 

Saunders said that practical problems — the design of a plant or a new process, for example — forces students to deal with real-world design implications. 

“The hardest engineering decisions take place at a higher level, where the interconnectedness of a unit operation, plant and the world around us takes shape,” he said. “The open-ended nature of the class is a significant shift from solving textbook problems, where only one answer exists and is the sole source of truth. You are now pitted against the unknown and must integrate creativity, decision-making and all you’ve learned.” 

After Saunders completed the course at the end of his senior year, he found himself with a stark choice: join an established company or a startup. 

“Thanks to senior design, I knew I had the foundation to make the jump and join a startup, where dealing with open-endedness and fast timelines is part of the job,” he said.

Adriana Robinson (ChemEngr'21) is an associate process design engineer with Chevron's TEMA Branch.

"Professor Weimer's senior design capstone class allowed me to network with a great company, learn directly from industry professionals and get exposure to design topics that I hadn't had much experience with in my classes," Robinson said.

"It challenged me to gain new skills, learn how to align with client-company expectations and lead a team successfully from project start to completion — something that has prepared me to face my new career path with confidence."

Alison Peters (ChemBioEngr’21) is a research associate at KBI Biopharma, Inc. Peters said that alongside internships, the Chemical Engineering Design Project course is the best way for students to gain perspective and experience on industry. 

“The soft skills I picked up in the class have proven to be invaluable,” Peters said. ���n my role as a research associate for a contract pharmaceutical lab, my daily tasks involve performing independent research, collaborating with teammates, seeking advice from supervisors, presenting progress to clients and writing and reviewing technical reports. Design was intentionally set up to give students real-life experience performing these kinds of tasks in cooperation with real-life chemical engineering companies, while reinforcing the chemical engineering curriculum.” 

Peters said that her course experiences were invaluable in job interviews and helped prepare her for her first industry position. 

“When I was asked to provide the department with feedback to improve the course, my only answer was: ‘I wish courses like this were available to underclassmen, too!'”

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Hydrogen has long been seen as a possible renewable fuel source, held out of reach for full-scale adoption by production costs and inefficiencies. Researchers in the Weimer Group are working to address this by using solar thermal processing to drive high-temperature chemical reactions that produce hydrogen and carbon monoxide, which can be used to synthesize liquid hydrocarbon fuels.

Postdoctoral research associate Kent Warren and graduate student Justin Tran of the Weimer Group are co-authors with Melvin E. and Virginia M. Clark Professor Alan Weimer on “A thermochemical study of iron aluminate-based materials: a preferred class for isothermal water splitting” published in earlier this month.

“This will result in a seismic shift in research directions for solar thermal water splitting,” Weimer said.

Warren, Tran and Weimer believe that low-cost iron aluminate-based oxides may improve performance over current methods of thermochemical H2 production, as they remain effective under less favorable conditions expected in large-scale production systems where implementing wide temperature changes and using excess steam is avoided to improve the process’ efficiency.

“There is a prevailing consensus in the solar thermochemistry community that, in order to produce an appreciable hydrogen yield under an isothermal operating configuration, prohibitive amounts of steam are required,” Warren said. “We conclusively demonstrated that, for the first time, this concern can be mitigated with proper active material selection. My hope is that this work not only helps rewrite this narrative, but also encourages other research labs and institutions to consider thermochemical water-splitting as a more viable alternative to other green hydrogen technologies such as water electrolysis.”

The researchers came to this conclusion by establishing the thermodynamic equilibrium behavior of iron aluminate-based oxides, then compared their findings to other materials subjected to similar methods by other researchers.

“We demonstrate that iron aluminate-based oxides can isothermally outperform other candidates, even when said candidates are exposed to more favorable temperature-swing conditions,” Warren said.

Warren cited his ten-year fascination with solar thermochemistry as inspiration for his work on this project, going back to his time as an undergraduate at Valparaiso University and later as a graduate research assistant at the University of Florida under Associate Professor Jonathan Scheffe, who is a former graduate student of Weimer’s.

���n 2019, I was offered a postdoctoral position to work with Professor Weimer on ‘breaking the world record of solar-to-hydrogen conversion efficiency,’ which I eagerly accepted,” Warren said. “Before I undertook that challenge, however, I needed to ensure that we were operating with the ideal material composition under conditions most favorable for practical applications.”

Prior to Warren’s arrival at ŷ���ڱ���Ƶ Boulder, Weimer had performed some preliminary work on iron aluminate-based oxides.

“That was the natural starting point,” Warren said. “I did not expect to learn that this class of materials exhibits such favorable thermodynamic properties under such adverse operating conditions.”

Graduate research assistant Justin Tran was responsible for gaining insight into the workings and mechanism of the iron aluminate-based materials during the characterization process. He developed phase diagrams and ran Rietveld refinement to help the group thermochemically characterize them. 

���'m inspired to work in this topic because of the potential to efficiently produce clean fuel, having a higher theoretical efficiency than competing processes,” Tran said. “This field still has a lot of room to grow and I'm excited to be part of �ٳ󲹳�.”

Warren believes their research serves as the foundation for the development of a prototype-scale reactor that will be evaluated with ŷ���ڱ���Ƶ Boulder’s high-flux solar simulator facility.

“The goal is to establish a world record solar-to-hydrogen conversion efficiency – the key metric for benchmarking our technology against other pathways to green hydrogen,” Warren said.

Tran expressed hope that their work will bring renewed interest to thermochemical fuel production, particularly isothermal operation.

“This work shows that with the proper material choice, we can efficiently produce clean, sustainable fuels,” Tran said.

�հ�����’s position with the Weimer Group is funded by a National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship Program. Parts of this research project are included in a CHEN 4530 senior capstone design project. It is sponsored by OMC Hydrogen, a startup interested in developing commercial green hydrogen processing, and is supported by the BOLD Center.

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