This is the archived website for the Catalysis Center for Energy Innovation (CCEI), an Energy Frontier Research Center
funded by the U.S. Department of Energy. CCEI operated from 2009 to 2024 at the University of Delaware.
ABOVE: This video, created in 2016, provided an introduction to the Catalysis Center for Energy Innovation (CCEI) and showcased the center’s work to bring inedible biomass to a new shade of “green” by converting it into new fuels and other products. Featured in the image, CCEI Director Dion Vlachos and then doctoral student Hannah Nguyen use a model of a catalyst to discuss its structure and properties.
About Us
The Catalysis Center for Energy Innovation (CCEI) was established in 2009 by a grant from the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE), Office of Science, Office of Basic Energy Sciences. CCEI was one of the first DOE Energy Frontier Research Centers (EFRCs) and among a select few externally funded centers focused on heterogeneous catalysis. Building on the University of Delaware’s long tradition of pioneering catalytic research—a legacy marked by the establishment of the Center for Catalytic Science and Technology (CCST) in 1978 and continuing today—CCEI brought together a multidisciplinary team of scientists from 17 institutions nationwide to address critical challenges in energy catalysis. The multi-institutional research center operated at the University of Delaware through three funding cycles spanning 15 years from 2009 to 2024.
CCEI’s mission focused on developing innovative heterogeneous catalytic technologies to transform lignocellulosic (non-food based) biomass materials into fuels, chemicals, and advanced materials. CCEI’s cornerstone research advanced catalysis and its integration into processes, delivering innovative technologies for the conversion of biomass feedstocks.
Research efforts aimed to realize significant scientific impact and assist in enabling the U.S. to meet challenges for sustainable energy applications through a spectrum of processes envisioned in a future biorefinery. The center provided a multiscale, integrated approach to solving scientific and engineering problems across scales and disciplines, including synthesis and characterization of novel catalysts, development and application of multiscale modeling, reaction and reactor evaluation, and technology transfer.
CCEI’s multi-institutional team of scientists and engineers brought extensive expertise in many crucial research areas, including materials synthesis, multiscale modeling, characterization, kinetics/catalysis, thermodynamics, systems analysis, and more.
CCEI proudly offered a vibrant environment to educate and stimulate the next generation of engineers and scientists needed in heterogeneous catalysis and reactors, biorefineries, and renewable energy sectors. The center’s alumni includes over 200 graduate students and postdoctoral scholars, the significant majority of whom have gone on to successful careers in academia, industry, and government. Research internships for more than 100 undergraduate interns and high school students were also supported by the center.
Fueling the quest for green energy
You can’t put a tree limb or a corncob in your gas tank and expect to get anything but a strange look and a bill from your mechanic. But that kind of fodder could one day be a fuel source as cheap and common as fossil fuels are now, providing renewable, sustainable raw materials for biorefineries that turn such agricultural waste into fuels, electricity, and chemicals.
To learn more about CCEI’s mission to develop a range of new catalysts to convert inedible biomass into sugars and oils that can then be used in fuels and chemicals, check out this 2016 cover story from the University of Delaware’s Research magazine.