Dec. 6, 2013. Holl 4-112 in Chemistry Building.

Seminar Title: Multifunctional Nanocomposites toward Environmental Remediation
Prof. Zhanhu Guo (Lamar University, USA)

Abstract:
 
  Water pollution has been an increasingly serious issue for human beings and ecosystems. Recently, more stringent water regulations have been issued by US EPA. For examples, the maximum permissible limit of chromium in drinking water is reduced to 100 μg/L. The conventional adsorption removal by activated carbon and displacement removal by bulk iron have been realized incapable of removing trace heavy metal ions to sastify the requirement. The depolyment of nanomaterials has been recently reported for industrial water treatment to satisfy this newly issued environmental law. However, the potential pollution and recycling of these nanomaterials themselves are not addressed yet. Recently, unique magnetic carbon nanostructures have shown great potential for industrial applications with two merits: (1) enhancing removal capacity and efficiency by tuned nanostructures and carbon surface functionalities, and (2) facilitating separation of adsorbents and adsorbed heavy metals by a permanent magnet.
 
  In this talk, the remediation of polluted water will be addressed by tailored multifunctional carbon nanocomposites. Two processes were introduced to manufacture desired multifunctional carbon nanocomposites. One was decorating structure-controlled magnetic nanoparticles with unique surface functionalties on graphene sheets from a facile one-pot thermodecomposition approach. The other was coating magnetic nanoparticles with a thin carbon shell, where its intrinsic structure (porous and solid shell) was tuned through the selective carbon precursor structure of polymers. The results from polluted water treatment by these magnetic carbon nanocomposites will be presented and the proposed mechanisms (adsorption, diffusion and displacement) will be discussed.
 
Biography：
 
  Dr. Guo, currently an Associate Professor in Dan F. Smith Department of Chemical Engineering at Lamar University, obtained a Chemical Engineering Ph.D. degree from Louisiana State University (2005) and received three-year (2005-2008) postdoctoral training in Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering Department in University of California Los Angeles. Dr. Guo directs the Integrated Composites Laboratory and has coauthored more than 160 peer-reviewed journal papers and five patents. Dr. Guo has received the University Merit Award of 2012 and University Scholar Award of 2013 at Lamar University. Current research focuses on multifunctional light-weight nanocomposites especially with polymer and carbon as the hosting matrix.