Taste and odour represent critical criteria in the evaluation of potable water quality for consumers and the removal of low concentration modern contaminants constitutes an ongoing problem particularly for utility water companies. My talk will focus on our recent work on contaminants removal using advanced oxidation techniques (AOP), such as non-thermal plasma (NTP) for regeneration of high surface area metal oxides. Results of computational studies on the competitive adsorption of some common pollutants in wastewater (phenols, aromatic and aliphatic hydrocarbons, heterocycles, inorganic anions, and water itself) will be discussed in conjunction with in situ infra-red measurements of the adsorbents following plasma exposure.
Biography
Dr Christina completed her PhD in Chemical Engineering in 2012 from the Queen’s University Belfast under the supervision of Prof Alex Goguet and Prof Chris Hardacre on the development and application of a spatially resolved technique for the investigation of structured catalysts under real reaction conditions. She then continued as a PDRA at the same university working on plasma assisted reactions for automotive emission control coupled with developing state of the art spatially resolved techniques and DRIFT-MS system to allow in-situ studies of heterogeneous catalysts in the presence of plasma. She is currently working at the University of Manchester in the group of Prof. Chris Hardacre. Her current project looks at scalable production of high purity hydrogen through Water Gas Shift using a hybrid non-thermal plasma process and further development of in-situ DRIFTS technique for plasma reactions.