Methane is a gaseous chemical that can be converted into chemicals of interest useful to industry. However, the grand challenge in methane functionalization is the low reactivity of
methane combined with the very high reactivity of its products. The high reactivity of its products
leads to overoxidation, which in turn leads to low generation of products of interest since over
oxidation leads to the formation of carbon dioxide. The goal of my research projects hereafter is
to selectively oxidize methane into the chemical methyl hydrogen sulfate (MHS), which can be
hydrolyzed into the commodity chemical of methanol. This is done by combining using transition
metals catalysts coupled with electrochemistry in a two-chamber electrochemical system.
Moreover, another aspect of my projects has been to propose electrochemical mechanisms for the
electrochemical reactions. The first part of my dissertation focuses on using a vanadium molecular
catalyst (chapter 2) to selectively oxidize methane electrocatalytically into MHS. Similarly, the
second part of this dissertation focuses on the selective oxidation of methane into MHS by using
a molecular silver catalyst (chapter 3). Both research projects of vanadium and silver molecular
catalysts both use electrochemistry as the driving force at ambient conditions of room pressure and
room temperature, however, the electrolyte used in the chemical reactions is not mild. The
electrochemical reaction used 98% concentrated sulfuric acid. While room pressure and
temperature is a big focus of the projects, there are studies in the research projects that utilize
elevated pressures and temperatures. The use of elevated temperatures and pressures allows us to
conduct experiments, which can give us an insight into the electrochemical mechanism that is
occurring during the electrolysis reactions. To my knowledge, methane oxidation at room
temperature and room pressure had not been seen before with a homogenous catalyst, so the
innovation of my project is successfully proving that it is possible to oxidize methane at ambient
conditions with a homogenous catalyst while proposing an electrochemical mechanism for the
reactions.