Dr. Helena Yuan Wang
The University of Melbourne, Australia
Title: Green Hydrogen Production Through Water Electrolysis
Abstract:
Clean hydrogen is crucial
in mitigating carbon emissions, particularly in challenging decarbonized
sectors like heavy manufacturing and energy-intensive industries. While direct
solar-driven water splitting has been investigated as an important technology,
the systems demonstrated so far either require expensive materials or present
low solar-to-hydrogen conversion efficiencies–both of which increase the
levelised cost of hydrogen. We developed a series of transition metal-based electrocatalysts
with versatile properties for hydrogen evolution and oxygen evolution reactions.
We aim to revolutionize alkaline electrolyzer technology by developing advanced
electrode materials and optimizing efficiency, durability, and
cost-effectiveness to provide the industry with a transformative solution for
sustainable and scalable green hydrogen production.
Biography:
Dr Helena Wang is a Senior
Lecturer, leader of the Renewable Resource & Sustainability Group (R2S)
and ARC-DECRA Fellow at the Department of Chemical Engineering at the
University of Melbourne. She completed her PhD in Chemical Engineering, at the
University of New South Wales (UNSW) in 2018. She has served as a committee member of the National Committee for
Chemistry under the Australian Academy of Science and an Executive Committee
Member for the IEEE Women in Engineering Victorian Section since 2023. She
held prestigious fellowships: the Alfred Deakin Research Fellowship-2022 at
Deakin University and the International Hydrogen Research Fellowship-2023 at
the National University of Singapore. She was also a DAAD Visiting Scholar at
the Fritz Haber Institute of Max Planck (2018). She has received several
awards, including ED-RACI-Metrohm ANZ Young Electrochemist Award (2021),
International Society of Electrochemistry (ISE) Award (2019), and UNSW Dean’s
Award (2019). Her research focuses on metal recovery and recycling of
batteries, green hydrogen production, carbon dioxide conversion and
utilization, and circular economy.