News

Postdocs and graduate students combined art, movement, dance and science for students from the Boulder Valley School District.

A Road Toward Sustainability – from Materials to Processes Speaker: Juan Manuel Restrepo-Flórez, Postdoctoral Associate University of Wisconsin-Madison Host: Will Medlin Tuesday, March 8, 2022 - 2:45 p.m., JSCBB A108 Seminar Abstract Industrial processes and transportation account for more than 70% of the United States energy consumption. Finding strategies to...

Computational Engineering of Materials at the Nanoscale—where “Classical” meets “Quantum” Speaker: Elizabeth Lee, Postdoctoral Researcher University of Chicago Host: Kayla Sprenger Thursday, March 3, 2022 - 2:45 p.m., JSCBB A108 Seminar Abstract Recent trends in materials have increasingly gone “nano”, transforming bulk material down to only a few hundred atoms...

Improved understanding of transport in concentrated electrolyte solutions has important implications for energy storage, water purification, biological applications, and more. This understanding should ideally persist across length scales: we desire both continuum-level insight into macroscopic concentration and electric potential profiles as well as a molecular-level understanding of the mechanisms governing ion motion. However, the most ubiquitous theory to describe continuum-level electrolyte transport, the Stefan-Maxwell equations, yields transport coefficients which lack clear molecular-level interpretation and cannot be easily computed from molecular simulations.

Hydrogen has long been seen as a possible renewable fuel source, held out of reach for full-scale adoption by production costs and inefficiencies. Researchers in the Weimer Group are working to address this by using solar thermal processing to drive high-temperature chemical reactions that produce hydrogen and carbon monoxide, which can be used to synthesize liquid hydrocarbon fuels.

Eight cross-disciplinary teams working to advance fundamental science in the removal of greenhouse gases from Earth’s atmosphere and oceans will receive awards totaling $1,210,000 in the second year of the Scialog: Negative Emissions Science initiative, sponsored by Research Corporation for Science Advancement and the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, with additional support from the Climate Pathfinders Foundation. The 22 individual awards of $55,000 will go to 20 researchers from a variety of institutions in the United States and Canada. Among the awardees is Adam Holewinski, Chemical & Biological Engineering, University of Colorado Boulder.

Climate change demands a paradigm change in the chemical industry and waste stream valorization.

Reverse osmosis modules comprised of composite polymer membranes represent a leading technology in desalination and purification of brackish water.

The covalent attachment of polymers has emerged as a powerful strategy for the preparation of multi-functional surfaces.

Current state-of-the-art composite materials are not light/strong enough for crewed missions to Mars and beyond.