Free tickets to solar presentation in Calgary

The 95th Canadian Chemistry Conference and Exhibition is coming to Calgary at the end of the month. Here’s an opportunity to get a free ticket.

The Institute for Sustainable Energy, Environment and Economy (ISEEE) and the Department of Chemistry  at the UofC are making 50 free tickets available to a talk by Thomas J. Meyer from the University of North Carolina. Thomas is one of the most highly cited chemists in the world and is part of the conference’s Energy Futures Symposium, which is sponsored by ISEEE.

His presentation is titled “Finding the Way to Solar Fuels”. Here’s the summary of the talk as provided by ISEEE – it will be technical.

“Concerns about long-term supply of hydrocarbon fuels and their environmental impact are creating an impetus for a new energy future. The sun may be the ultimate renewable energy source but it has limits. It will require energy storage on unprecedented, massive scales with daytime generation of solar fuels for storage and later use for nighttime power generation. Target solar fuel reactions are water splitting into hydrogen and oxygen and CO2 reduction to CO, other oxygenates, or hydrocarbons. Carrying out these multiple electron/multiple proton reactions with single photon excitation poses a considerable challenge. Natural photosynthesis provides a model but its approximately 1 per cent efficiency for biomass production is too inefficient for solar fuel applications. Multiple approaches are under investigation from solar thermal to direct band gap excitation of semiconductors. A promising approach, based on molecules and molecular level phenomena, is Dye Sensitized Photoelectrosynthesis Cells (DSPECs). They function like dye sensitized solar cells (DSSCs) with redox equivalents produced by molecular-level excitation and injection into wide band gap semiconductors. However, they are used to drive physically separated solar fuel half reactions instead of a photocurrent. Significant progress has been made on the underlying catalytic reactions for water oxidation and CO2 reduction and gaining an understanding of the dynamics of injection and back electron transfer under conditions appropriate for DSPEC water splitting.”

Still interested? Here’s how you can get one of the free tickets.

Register for this talk (scroll to the bottom of the page) and you will be sent a confirmation email. Bring this confirmation email with you to get into the talk. If you register and don’t get a confirmation letter, it is because the tickets are all gone.

When: 5-6 p.m., Tuesday, May 29
Where: Calgary TELUS Convention Centre (Exhibition Hall E), 120 9th Avenue SE, Calgary.