Abstract

Our research revolves around the study and application of porous materials. Such materials exhibit a high internal surface area and many display a unique chemical versatility. Examples of porous materials include activated carbon, zeolites, metal organic frameworks. Together, their features make these materials attractive for interfacial processes such as gas adsorption and catalysis. Using examples from our work, I will present how we exploit these materials for interfacial phenomena of relevance to carbon management, namely CO2 capture and CO2 conversion. These examples span a wide spectrum of the R&D process, from curiosity-driven investigations (e.g. spectroscopy analyses on pores formation) to engineering-driven studies (e.g. process scale modelling of gas separation).

Bio: Dr Camille Petit is a Professor in the Department of Chemical Engineering at Imperial College London, which she joined in September 2013. She currently leads the Multifunctional Materials Laboratory. Prior to this appointment, she was a postdoctoral researcher at Columbia University. She received her PhD in Chemistry in 2011 from the Graduate Center of the City University of New York and her M. Sc in 2007 from Ecole Nationale Superieure de Chimie de Montpellier, France. Her research focuses on elucidating the fundamentals of porous materials formation, structure, and chemistry to exploit them in interfacial applications, i.e. separation of molecules and solar fuel production. Her work also investigates the implications of using these materials at the large-scale. Materials of interest include metal-organic frameworks (MOFs)- and nitride-based materials. Prof Petit has received awards across the chemistry, materials and chemical engineering disciplines (e.g. 2020 RSC Barrer Award, 2019 ERC Starting Grant, 2019 Philip Leverhulme Prize in Engineering, 2017 AIChE’s 35 under 35 award, 2017 IOM3 Silver Medal).