Assistant Professor
Srikanth Nayak
407, CHE Block
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PhD: Iowa State University
Research Interests: Chemical separations, hydrometallurgy, and interfacial science
Research Overview
Chemical separation processes are fundamental to the chemical industry and consume a large portion of the industrial energy usage. Advances in chemical separations are critical to addressing pressing global and national challenges such as green house gas emissions (separating potent GHG gases from dilute streams), desalination and decontamination, critical mineral extraction and recycling, and nuclear waste processing are some of the prominent examples. Traditional separation processes rely on thermal unit operations such as distillation and evaporation, and are energetically expensive leading to undesirably large ecological and climactic footprint. This has motivated the development of efficient and selective non-thermal separation processes such as ion-exchange and membrane separations. My research is focused on understanding the fundamental drivers of chemical separations and design novel separations media and processes that are scalable, less energy intensive, and environmentally benign. The main focus is on the separation of metallic components from liquid streams. It rests on three pillars: 1) metal complexation in complex electrolytes and confined media, 2) interfacial phenomena in metal separations, and 3) synthesis of selective- and tunable nanomaterials.
Research Highlights
Metal complexation in complex electrolytes
Input streams to separation processes often consist of complex electrolytic solutions that provide rich metal speciation behavior due to the presence of multiple ligands. We study the metal speciation in real and simulated feed streams using analytical and spectroscopic techniques and develop the corresponding thermodynamic models.
Interfacial phenomena in metal separations
Interfacial phenomena are ubiquitous in chemical separations and affect not only separation kinetics, but can also affect the energetics of separations, as they can template the formation of the separated/extracted species and also show metal-ligand complexation behavior that is different from the bulk counterpart. We will study Langmuir monolayers as an effective model to understand the role of interfaces in metal separations.
Synthesis of selective- and tunable nanomaterials for separations
Nanomaterials offer attractive properties with regards to chemical separations such as high surface area that can be functionalized for selective ion capture, tunable morphology, and unique ion solvation and complexation behavior which can be leveraged to enhance chemical separations. We will be synthesizing nanocomposite ion exchange adsorbents and polyelectrolyte membranes designed to selectively capture critical minerals.