Morgan Lehtinen, PhD in Chemistry, supervised by Dr Guojun Liu

Topic: H2Only: Smart Filters for Efficient Oil/Water Separation. Overview: In a world that relies heavily on the use of crude oil as an energy source, clean oil recovery and spill remediation is of dire importance. Removing oil from surfactant stabilized oil-in-water emulsions has become an issue in numerous industries as current separation processes are tedious and wasteful of resources. Our research group has developed functionalized 'smart' filters that can selectively and efficiently separate the oil from oil-in-water emulsions.  I will discuss the environmental and operational advantages of this novel filter and its potential to improve the cleanliness of a normally dirty industry.