Born in Barcelona in 1966, Jordi Llorca earned his PhD in Chemistry at the University of Barcelona, where he was later appointed Associate Professor and Ramón y Cajal Fellow. In 2005 he joined the Technical University of Catalonia (UPC) and in 2014 he became Full Professor as Serra Húnter Fellow. He has conducted research at the Univ. New Mexico (US) and CNRS and has been Invited Scholar at the Univ. Udine, Univ. Auckland and CONICET. He received the Distinction of Generalitat de Catalunya to the Promotion of the University Research in 2003, the Humbert Torres Prize in 2003 and the ICREA Academia in 2009 and in 2014. He has been Director of the Institute of Energy Technologies, Director of the Centre for Research in NanoEngineering and, now, he is Director of the Barcelona Research Center in Multiscale Science and Engineering. He has published over 300 scholarly articles and authored 12 patents. He is Academician of the Institute for Catalan Studies, Section of Science and Technology.

Research interests

Prof. Jordi Llorca is working on the design and manufacture of new devices at the nanoscale for conducting chemical reactions aimed at the generation, purification and separation of hydrogen for portable fuel cells as well as other processes related to energy and environmental applications. He is interested on the development of a new generation of highly efficient catalysts based on surface science studies as well as “in situ” and “operando” spectroscopy and microscopy at the atomic level addressed to unravel the catalytic active sites. He is involved in the design and manufacture of fuel reformers and catalytic membrane reactors for practical use and in the development of novel microreaction engineering concepts. Another research line conducted by Prof. Jordi Llorca is the direct production of hydrogen from water and sunlight at room temperature, which includes the synthesis and study of novel photocatalysts with semiconductors, metal nanoparticles and photonic crystals.

Keywords

Catalysis, Hydrogen, Microreactors, Fuel Cells