CBE Spring Seminar Series Speaker: William Tarpeh

Description

Selective Adsorbents and Catalytic Separations for Electrochemical Wastewater Refining

Bio: Dr. William Tarpeh is an assistant professor of chemical engineering at Stanford University.  The Tarpeh Lab develops and evaluates selective separations in “waste” waters at several synergistic scales: molecular mechanisms of chemical transport and transformation; novel unit processes that increase resource efficiency; and systems-level assessments that identify optimization opportunities. Will completed his B.S. in chemical engineering at Stanford, his M.S. and Ph.D. in environmental engineering at UC Berkeley, and postdoctoral training at the University of Michigan in environmental engineering. His recent awards include the Dreyfus Teacher-Scholar Award, AIChE 35 Under 35 and the Environmental Division Early Career Award, and the Electrochemical Society Young Investigator Fellowship.

Abstract: Wastewaters are underutilized mines that can improve the sustainability of chemical manufacturing. Converting aqueous pollutants into high-purity products require both separations and reactions with high selectivity. To date, aqueous separations have generally used solute size, charge, and valence to distinguish desired and undesired components. A remaining challenge is separating ions that share multiple properties, such as ammonium/potassium and lithium/sodium. These ion-selective separations require integrated design of materials and processes, particularly electrochemical separations and electrocatalysis that can be paired with renewable energy and on-site manufacturing. Both membranes and adsorbents present opportunities to design polymeric backbones and functional groups of materials that can achieve ion-selective separation processes. This seminar will describe recent work on designing nitrogen-selective electrochemical processes that enable treatment of polluted waters and lithium-selective materials that enable battery recycling.