Event
CHBE Seminar: Dr. Kyra Sedransk Campbell, University of Sheffield
Friday, April 5, 2024
11:00 a.m.
Room 2108 Chemical and Nuclear Engineering Building
Patricia Lorenzana
301-405-1935
plorenza@umd.edu
Using Ionic Liquids for Greener Syntheses and Waste Treatment
Abstract: While ionic liquids have attracted widespread attention for their desirable properties, particularly in comparison to volatile organic compounds, understanding of aqueous ionic liquid solutions has remained limited. Our group has probed the aggregation (or lack thereof) behaviours, as a function of concentration and temperature, in a popular family of ionic liquids. This has been enormously important in providing the underpinning knowledge required in our group’s efforts to use these solution interactions with metals in their solid and ionic form towards both greener synthetic processes and tackling waste stream treatment. In this seminar, I will discuss our fundamental work to understand the aggregation behaviours including our use of various NMR techniques and XAS studies from Diamond Light Source and the European Synchrotron Radiation Facility. This understanding has underpinned our ability to explore applications. I will talk about the Oxidative Ionothermal Synthesis method and its utility in controlling the formation of a wide range of Zn-based products, as an example. I will continue by talking about the formation of Simonkolleite and some of our most recent work looking at using Fe/Zn aqueous waste streams to produce Zn-Fe-LDHs, which demonstrate photocatalytic performance 5x that of commercially available ZnO. In this final application, I will explore how our new models and methodologies using Quartz Crystal Microbalance with Dissipation have been instrumental in developing our enhanced understanding of the crystal formation.
Bio: Kyra Sedransk Campbell is a Senior Lecturer (Associate Professor) in the Department of Chemical and Biological Engineering at the University of Sheffield. She obtained her BS in Chemical Engineering from MIT in 2008 and her PhD in Chemical Engineering in 2013 from the University of Cambridge supported by an NSF Graduate Research Fellowship. She was a Royal Society - EPSRC Dorothy Hodgkin Research Fellow at Imperial College London. Her research interests include understanding the chemical and physical properties of aqueous-’soluble’ ionic liquids with a view towards applications in green synthesis and wastewater treatment. This work is an outgrowth of her experience in studying the corrosion behaviours of ionic liquids, particularly looking at the interactions of ionic liquids and metals at the solid-liquid interface. To enhance understanding of these surfaces, her group has been developing new ways in which Quartz Crystal Microbalance can be applied as a technique to study deposition, fouling, and crystal growth on surfaces. This is complemented by development of new models to describe these behaviours, from which key material properties can be extracted.
