(2mi) Advancing Switchable Solvents for the Sustainable Water Reuse and Desalination Applications
AIChE Annual Meeting
2023
2023 AIChE Annual Meeting
Meet the Candidates Poster Sessions
Meet the Faculty and Post-Doc Candidates Poster Session
Sunday, November 5, 2023 - 1:00pm to 3:00pm
Doctoral Research: My doctoral research has focused on the application of switchable solvents for the management of hypersaline brines, which are of growing environmental importance but presently underserved by conventional treatment methods. Temperature swing solvent extraction (TSSE) is an emerging technology that is able to desalinate these brines, thereby reducing their volume and facilitating disposal while simultaneously producing fit-for-purpose water to alleviate supply stress. TSSE utilizes a switchable solvent with thermally responsive polarity to extract water from the hypersaline brine while rejecting salts. Low-temperature heat triggers the solvent to switch from a hydrophilic to a more hydrophobic state, causing the product water to disengage from the extract and regenerating the solvent to be recycled into the process. My doctoral research advances our understanding of TSSE along four main dimensions: (a) investigating the influence of temperature on equilibrium partitioning of water, salt, and solvent, (b) conducting Hunter-Nash analysis of ternary diagrams to design an intermediate-step separation process that dramatically improves salt rejection while maintaining high water recovery yields, (c) formulating a thermodynamically rigorous physical chemistry framework for a priori determination of ion activity coefficients in TSSE multicomponent biphasic systems, and (d) assessing key physicochemical properties that determine the fate of organic contaminants found in real hypersaline brines.
Teaching Interests: My undergraduate degree is in Chemical Engineering and my Ph.D. is in Environmental Engineering. I feel qualified and motivated to teach core undergraduate courses such as thermodynamics, separation fundamentals, and aquatic chemistry. In addition, I can design graduate-level courses on physicochemical processes for water treatment as well as advanced thermodynamics with an emphasis on activity coefficient modeling. I have been a teaching assistant for a highly technical Aquatic Chemistry course as well as a broader Alternative Energy Resources course. In addition, I have mentored several undergraduate students, from diverse and underrepresented backgrounds, within the Yip research lab. I was awarded the distinction as my departmentâs 2023â2023 Lead Teaching Fellow and am on track to complete the Teaching Development Program at Columbia Universityâs Center for Teaching and Learning.