Dr. Tom Burdyny

The Burdyny Energy Lab in the MECS Group is focused on researching technologies that are capable of replacing current fossil fuel manufacturing routes with processes that use renewable electricity as an input. These technologies use electricity to form chemical bonds (also known as electrocatalysis). At present, our primary research focus is on carbon-dioxide (CO₂) electrolysis, which can convert CO₂ into base chemicals such as CO and ethylene. We take a more engineering approach to the research problem and are focusing on a) scaling-up CO₂ electrolyzers in the lab, b) understanding transport related phenomena occurring inside a CO₂ electrolyzer, and c) assessing the potential impact and operation of H₂O and CO₂ electrolyzers on our global energy infrastructure. The work is embedded within the e-Refinery Institute.

Academic background

Thomas Burdyny has a mechanical engineering education in the form of a BEng and MASc from the University of Victoria in Canada. He moved to the University of Toronto for his PhD thesis in photocatalytic and electrocatalytic conversion of CO₂ (under Prof. David Sinton), before beginning a postdoctoral fellow at TU Delft in 2018. In 2019 he opened his research group as an Assistant Professor working to advance the performance and scalability of electrochemical technologies. The research mixture of the group is broad and ranges from operando techniques, catalyst development, electrochemical engineering, and transport analysis of electrochemical systems.