Events Calendar

Astani Civil and Environmental Engineering Seminar

Speaker: Dr. Joshua Jack, Postdoctoral Research Scholar, Princeton University

Talk Title: Engineering a New Circular Economy: Waste CO2 valorization and resource recovery towards an improved water-energy-climate nexus

Abstract: Understanding and advancing the water-energy-climate nexus is key to mitigating the immense threats of climate change and solving many of the related environmental issues we face today. Due to the rapid decrease in the cost of renewable energy, it is now practical to design devices that use renewable electrons to drive the transformation of CO2 and other waste feedstock (wastewater, food waste, biomass) into high-value products while also recovering important resources such as water, nutrients, and energy. Overall, these new sustainable technologies can help us decarbonize various sectors and enable a new circular economy. This presentation will discuss opportunities to leverage cutting-edge hybrid electrochemical-biological technologies in diverse environmental applications including wastewater reclamation, water reuse, remediation, desalination, and CO2 capture and conversion. Current lab scale experiments have demonstrated excellent production rates, titer,and energy efficiencies. Efforts towards improving scalability, expanding the portfolio of products, and implementing new types of waste streams are on going.

Biography: Joshua Jack is a postdoctoral research scholar in the Andlinger Center for Energy and Environment and the Civil and Environmental Engineering department at Princeton University. Jack previously earned a bachelor degree in Civil and Environmental Engineering from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst and holds a doctoral degree in Environmental Engineering from the University of Colorado, Boulder. During his graduate studies, Jack obtained extensive interdisciplinary research experience at both the DOE-National Renewable Energy Laboratory and NASA Langley Research Center, and has received numerous awards including a NASA Outstanding Research Award and NSF Fellowship. Jack current research focuses on energy and resource recovery as part of a sustainable water-energy-climate nexus with a special focus on process design of bioelectrochemical technologies toward scalable CO2 valorization and water treatment. Jack collaborates with many researchers from the Department of Chemical and Biological Engineering as well as various DOE laboratories and private companies such as Shell Energy. Jack has recently published in many highly cited journals including Applied Energy and Green Chemistry and plans to begin a tenure-track academic position in the near future.

Host: D. Amy Childress

Webcast: https://usc.zoom.us/j/91873923659 Meeting ID: 918 7392 3659 Passcode: 975701

Location: Ronald Tutor Hall of Engineering (RTH) - 526

WebCast Link: https://usc.zoom.us/j/91873923659 Meeting ID: 918 7392 3659 Passcode: 975701

Audiences: Everyone Is Invited

Contact: Evangeline Reyes