Welcome to my research page!
This page is an introduction for non-specialists to some of the areas and projects I have worked on or am currently exploring in an academic context. This is not a complete list. For a complete and up to date list of publications I have contributed to, see my Google Scholar.
Earth-Abundant Catalysts for Hydrogen Production
PhD Project Interest
Status: Active
This is my primary research focus during my PhD studies. Hydrogen production, primarily for the steel industry and ammonia synthesis, contributes to approximately 10% of global CO2 emissions. This is because 95% of industrial hydrogen production occurs via steam reforming of methane, a process that emits carbon monoxide and carbon dioxide along with hydrogen gas.
Hydrogen can be made without CO2 emissions using water splitting, a simple idea in which current is applied to convert H2O into H2 and O2. However, electrochemical production of hydrogen currently contributes only about 5% of the global hydrogen production market. This is partially due to the high cost and rarity of appropriate catalyst materials for the reaction (Ir for oxygen evolution, Pt for hydrogen evolution). To address this, my research focuses on developing earth-abundant catalysts with high electrochemical activity and high stability for use in hydrogen electrolysis.
My approach will combine in situ spectroscopic techniques with computational modelling to identify optimal alloy catalyst compositions and understand how they degrade.
MicroSeize
Capstone Design Project, University of Waterloo
Co-authors: Ryan Ellis, Alex Matos, and Matthew Scarfo
Status: Complete
Microplastics smaller than 20 um are persistent and harmful pollutant with serious implications for human health and the environment. Current methods fail to effectively remove microplastics smaller than 20 micrometers, generate waste, and are not scalable for industrial aplications. This project aimed to answer the question, how can we remove microplastics from drinking water in a healthy, environmentally conscious, and scalable way?
MicroSeize consists of two main components:
- Chemical design: Magnetize microplastics using iron oxide nanoparticles designed for high adsorption efficiency, recyclability, and selectivity.
- Mechanical design: Develop a scalable system based on existing industrial batch reactors to capture magnetized microplastics effectively.
My specific contribution was to synthesize iron oxide nanoparticles and assess their performance at removing different types of plastic from water. Our team successfully produced a bench scale prototype that was able to remove 98% of microplastics from a sample of drinking water, including plastics smaller than 20 microns.
There is a patent pending for this design.
For more information, you can view our poster or read about the project in Waterloo News