Two doctoral students made invited talks at 2023 AWWA NJ ANNUAL CONFERENCE

On March 22th, 2023, two group members (Jianan Gao and Qingquan Ma) were invited to attend the 2023 American Water Works Association Annual Conference and presented their talks. Jianan gave a talk on “Electrocatalytic Upcycling of Nitrate to Ammonia Fertilizer via Electrified Membrane”, funded by NSF/BSF Environmental Engineering (Award number: 2215387) and New Jersey Water Resources Research Institute (Award#: G21AP10595-01). In this presentation, Jianan introduced nitrogen upcycling using novel electrochemical reactor with unique electrode surface/interface and electrocatalyst layer designs. The findings demonstrate the technical and economic feasibility of electrochemically upgrading nitrate-nitrogen pollution to ammonia-nitrogen from wastewater/groundwater with simultaneous ammonia recovery at the membrane interface.

Qingquan presented the research on “Electrosorption, Desorption and Oxidation of Perfluoroalkyl Carboxylic Acids (PFCAs) via MXene-based Electrocatalytic Membranes”, funded by NSF PFI grant (Award number: 2016472), NSF INTERN grant (Award number: 1836036) and NJIT/BGU faculty seed grants. This talk introduced three types of MXenes with oxygen, fluorine and chlorine as the respective terminal atoms and evaluates their electrosorption, desorption and oxidative properties for PFOA and PFBA. He also employed density functional theory (DFT) simulation to bridge experimental and computational results and maximize their utility to guide the design of efficient and selective electrocatalysts.

 Wen's Research Group​

Wen Zhang, Ph.D., P.E., BCEE

Principal Investigator
Professor

Phone: (973) 596-5520 
Fax: (973) 596-5790
Email: wen.zhang@njit.edu

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