PhD student
Email: granite@seas.upenn.edu
220 S 33rd St
Towne 347
Philadelphia, PA, 19104
Bio
current: Ph.D. student in Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering, University of Pennsylvania
2023: B.S. in Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering, University of Delaware
Current Research
Self-assembled membranes are advantageous for filtration due to their monodisperse pore sizes, which have been shown to address common tradeoffs between membrane permeability and selectivity. My work focuses on utilizing self-assembled nanoporous membranes for organic solvent separations such as organic solvent nanofiltration (OSN) and organic solvent reverse osmosis (OSRO). I focus heavily on membrane fabrication and performance in addition to how organic solvents impact the structure of self-assembled membranes at the nanoscale. Self-assembly of surfactants relies on the formation of aggregates, called micelles, due to the strong thermodynamic interaction of hydrophilic headgroups with aqueous solvents like water, and conversely the repulsion of hydrophobic tail groups by water. Even when geometrically defined phases formed by surfactant self-assembly are polymerized for their employment as membranes, organic solvents can impact the precise nanoscale structures which are formed. This is because the very different chemical nature of organic solvents compared to water impacts the thermodynamic phenomena which govern self-assembly. Due to these impacts, monomer design and polymerization strategies utilized for self-assembled membranes employed for OSN and OSRO are nontrivial. I use techniques such as small-angle x-ray scattering and polarized optical microscopy to characterize mesophase nanostructures, spin coating and scanning electron microscopy to fabricate and characterize thin film composite membranes, and practical filtration techniques coupled with gas chromatography to study the transport of organic species in separations of industrial relevance.