National Renewable Energy Laboratory

Plant cell wall structure and chemistry traits are evaluated to identify ideal feedstocks for biofuels and bio-materials. Standard methods have limitations when applied to large data sets. These high-throughput pretreatment, enzyme saccharification, and pyrolysis-molecular beam mass spectrometry methods compare large numbers of biomass samples with decreased experimental time and cost.

Here we present a potentiometric titration technique for accurately quantifying carbonyl compounds in pyrolysis bio-oils.

Presented here is a protocol for the operation of a micro-scale temperature-programmed reactor for evaluating the catalytic performance of molybdenum carbide during acetic acid deoxygenation.

  The protocol describes the synthesis and electrochemical testing of platinum-nickel nanowires. Nanowires were synthesized by the galvanic displacement of a nickel nanowire template. Post-synthesis processing, including hydrogen annealing, acid leaching, and oxygen annealing were used to optimize nanowire performance and durability in the oxygen reduction reaction.

Dynamic, tensile strain is applied on TiO₂ thin films to study the effects of strain on electrocatalysis, specifically proton reduction and water oxidation. TiO₂ films are prepared by thermal treatment of the pseudo-elastic NiTi alloy (Nitinol).

Here, we present a protocol for performing in situ TEM closed-cell gas reaction experiments while detailing several commonly used sample preparation methods.