(6ec) Development of Next Generation of Energy-Efficient Separation Technologies through Advanced Tunable Materials

My research work focuses on design and development of novel high performance hollow fiber membranes and sorbents with complex morphologies out of advanced polymers and nanostructured materials, and their applications in membrane-based gas separation, and renewable energy production. After completing my PhD on biofuels purification by pervaporation-based membrane process at Chinese Academy of Sciences, I worked as an Assistant Professor for more than one year at the same institute and continued to focus on the research in bioethanol and biobutanol production from biomass resources by fermentation/pervaporation integrated process. In 2012 I joined Koros Research Group as a Laboratory Manager and Research Engineer at Georgia Institute of Technology. During my work with Dr. Bill Koros, my research interests in the areas of Energy Efficiency and Environmental Sustainability have broadened greatly, but still focus on the advanced membrane materials for low energy intensive large scale separation processes.

Currently, I am a Research Engineer at Georgia Tech, where I am expanding my expertise in membrane-based gas separation by engineering the tunable membrane materials. As a Laboratory Manager, I also provide mentorship and instruction to the undergraduates, PhD students and post-doctoral fellows in a group of over 20 researchers since 2012. This position has allowed me to expend my expertise from dense films and asymmetric flat-sheet membranes to high performance hollow fiber membranes, and also from membrane-based separations to combined hollow fiber sorbents adsorption and membrane-based coupled separations. By using advanced crosslinkable polymers, functionalized polymers of intrinsic microporosity (PIMs), and several other commercially available polymers, I have created high performance dense films and hollow fiber membranes for aggressive sour gas separations, CO₂ capture, and renewable energy production.

My future research will address both fundamental issues and applied research related to membrane-based gas separations, CO₂ capture, and organophilic pervaporation membrane technology for renewable energy production. Using the knowledge of the industrially available material properties developed in the fundamental studies, I will strongly focus on conducting cutting-edge research in engineering the advanced polymer structures and economical processes to produce high performance membranes with the emphasis on global CO₂ reduction, energy conversion, and clean technology which will be met industrial applications.