Semester:Week 3 This week's chemistry seminar was about the selective conversion of biomass to fuel and useful chemicals. It was a presentation by Dr. Jason C Hicks from the Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering at the University of Notre Dame. The presentation was on heterogeneous catalysis that can selectively remove the oxygen from biomass. There was a lot that I learned during this seminar but one thing in particular was how catalysts are regenerated. Another interesting thing that I learned was that CO2 can be used to titrate with. This was an interesting seminar that spoke on a very important issue in today's economy. The problem of non-renewable resources, specifically high energy dense liquid fuels. The speaker spoke on the difficulty of using raw biofuels due to their acidic nature and low stability. I found it interesting that the seminar speaker saw more local production of biofuel as compared with the centralized production of fossil fuels. Overall, I would say this was a relatively interesting seminar which helped the students understand a complicated issue. However, as the seminar continued the level of complexity increased to the point that many people in the audience, myself included, became confused. This has been a reoccurring issue in a number of the seminar talks we have had this year. The general overview of the topic is introduced early on but the audience is lost half way through. This makes it difficult for some students to participate in the question and answer session as they do not know what has and has not been covered. With the exception of this problem the seminar was interesting and insightful.
