This summer, I will be working on a project to develop activated carbon materials for electrochemical capacitors made from locally available biomass waste, particularly waste tea leaves. The aim is to design a process that will create a material with optimal pore structure for efficient energy storage while remaining affordable and sustainable.
Over the past decade, fossil-based feedstocks have contributed to 48 Gt CO2 equivalents of anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions and increased atmospheric CO2 concentration by over 2 ppm per year. The replacement of fossil-based feedstocks would definitely disrupt and transform the current paradigm in fuel and chemical production, paving the way for ultimate sustainability. For this reason, access to reliable, renewable feedstocks and to the technology platform for refining them remains the overarching goal. This is because achieving this goal enables shuffling of carbon and hydrogen atoms through the energy and chemical consumption cycles perpetually. The project aims to discover novel catalytic routes for sustainable synthesis of specialty chemicals and fuels from renewable oxygenates as chemical building blocks. The project emphasizes on finding optimal reaction conditions using the Alcohol-to-Jet Synthetic Paraffinic Kerosene pathway for sustainable aviation fuel production.
Organic materials have emerged as promising candidates for lithium-ion batteries because of their low cost, simple synthesis, and sustainable nature. The purpose of this research is to combine the beneficial aspects of both conductive polymers and radical groups to create a new class of materials that have both high conductivity and high capacity. The polymers will contain a conjugated backbone which will serve to increase the conductivity of the material without requiring an excess of conductive additives. The radical pendant groups will serve to increase the capacity of the system. As a result, these polymer materials will exhibit improved performance, both in their amount of active material loading and capacity than either of its constituent components. Various polymer backbones and radical pendant groups will be investigated to determine which combination results in a material with optimal performance as an organic electrode.
Microplastics in our clothing is responsible for 35% of microplastics in aquatic systems. The goal of the project is to find coatings or material changes would minimize the release of microplastics while washing.
This research focuses on the development of new organic molecules (coloured dyes, to be specific) with electron-conducting properties (i.e. semiconducting) for applications in organic solar cells (i.e., devices that transform sunlight into electricity) and in energy-efficient, organic light-emitting diodes (i.e., devices that convert electricity into light). Rather than focusing on the traditional inorganic-based devices, Nina focuses on the organic counterpart due to their several merits such as being lightweight, inexpensive, flexible, and having increased sustainability in the production process.
Ihor is currently a second-year Ph.D. student in the Department of Physical and Environmental Sciences. After completing his honours B.Sc. degree in Physics at the Taras Shevchenko University of Kyiv, Ihor joined Clean Energy Lab at the University of Toronto, where he works under the supervision of Professor Oleksandr Voznyy. Ihor’s research focuses on accelerating the discovery of materials for clean energy applications with machine learning. Specifically, he develops techniques to predict the electronic structure of materials, aiming to improve renewable energy generation and storage.
“In conventional carbon capture systems, a nucleophilic sorbent binds CO2 and must be regenerated through a pressure or temperature swing. By contrast, emerging electrochemical methods achieve the capture and release of CO2 through redox-active mediators whose nucleophilicity or basicity can be enabled/disabled via electrochemical swings. Through CPE’s Climate Solutions Scholarship, I will work on the design, synthesis, and evaluation of organic mediators with the goal of improving their long-term stability.”
“I am a postdoctoral fellow in the Sargent Group at the University of Toronto. I received my Ph.D. from the Department of Mining and Materials Engineering at McGill University with studies focused on two-dimensional materials and single-atom catalysts using density functional theory. My current research interests are data-driven high-throughput materials screening, mechanistic study related to electrocatalytic reactions using computational electrochemistry and microkinetic modeling.”
Harrison’s research is on chemical recycling of consumer plastics by light-mediated photocatalytic processes.
Yizhi’s research is on photothermal ice nucleation inhibiting coatings for improved clean energy equity.