Please join us for the 14th Annual Stanford Student Energy Lecture Series! During the series, 16 graduate students/postdoctoral scholars, consisting of two speakers per week, will present their energy-related research to an audience of Stanford students, faculty, and staff. 

Anthony Degleris 

Talk title: Scalable and Interactive Electricity Grid Expansion Planning

Abstract: Large scale grid expansion planning studies are essential to rapidly and efficiently decarbonizing the electricity sector. These studies help policy makers and grid participants understand which renewable generation, storage, and transmission assets should be built and where they will be most cost effective or have the highest emissions impact. However, these studies are often either too computationally expensive to run repeatedly or too coarsely modeled to give actionable decision information. In this talk, we describe an implicit gradient descent algorithm to solve expansion planning studies at scale, i.e., problems with many scenarios and large network models. Our algorithm is interactive: given a base plan, planners can modify assumptions and data, then quickly receive an updated plan. This allows the planner to study expansion outcomes for a wide variety of weather, electrification, and technology cost assumptions with high fidelity grid models. We highlight applications of our method using a large-scale model of the Western U.S. electricity system.

Bio: Anthony Degleris is a PhD candidate in Electrical Engineering. He is part of the Stanford Sustainable Systems Lab and advised by Ram Rajagopal and Abbas El Gamal. He previously received his B.S. in Electrical Engineering at Stanford as well. His research is centered around developing computational tools for planning and operating the electricity grid. Specifically, his current work focuses on developing efficient and interactive tools for long-term electricity grid planning.

Gennaro Liccardo

Talk title: Unveiling the stability of encapsulated Pt catalysts

Abstract: Platinum exhibits desirable catalytic properties, but it is scarce and expensive. Optimizing its use in key applications like emission control catalysis is important to reduce our reliance on such a rare element. Supported Pt nanoparticles used in emission control systems deactivate over time because of particle growth in sintering processes. In this work, we shed light on the stability against sintering of Pt nanoparticles supported on and encapsulated in Al2O3 using a combination of nanocrystal catalysts and atomic layer deposition (ALD) techniques. We find that small amounts of alumina overlayers created by ALD on pre-formed Pt nanoparticles can stabilize supported Pt catalysts, significantly reducing deactivation caused by sintering, as previously observed by others. We correlate this behavior to the decreased propensity of oxidized Pt species to undergo Ostwald ripening phenomena because of the physical barrier imposed by the alumina overlayers. The enhanced stability significantly improves the Pt utilization efficiency after accelerated aging treatments, with encapsulated Pt catalysts reaching reaction rates more than two times greater than a control supported Pt catalyst.t from magnesium and sodium.

Bio: Gennaro Liccardo is a PhD candidate in The Department of Chemical Engineering at Stanford University, under the mentorship of Professor Stacey Bent and Professor Matteo Cargnello. His research focuses on the synthesis of tailored materials for heterogeneous catalysis combining colloidal nanocrystals and atomic layer deposition. Gennaro obtained both his B.S. (2018) and M.S. (2020) in Chemical Engineering from Università degli studi di Napoli Federico II. Before joining Stanford University, Gennaro was working as a packaging development scientist at Procter & Gamble.