Metal-organic frameworks for hydrogen purification
School of Engineering and Electronics, University of Edinburgh
Funding is available for a PhD studentship in the School of Engineering and Electronics, University of Edinburgh for a collaborative project with the School of Chemistry, University of St Andrews. Metal organic frameworks (MOFs) constitute one of the most exciting developments in recent nanoporous-material s science, with
potential applications in many areas, including catalysis, gas separation and storage. The major advantage of MOFs over more traditional porous materials, such as zeolites, is the greater scope for tailoring these materials for specific applications due to their modular synthesis from corner units (generally metal ions or clusters) and linker units (organic molecules able to bridge the metal corners).
The project
Hydrogen is a potential future automotive fuel as well as an important industrial feedstock. For fuel-cell applications, as well as in many industrial processes, high purity is required. The hydrogen required can be produced either by generating it from steam reforming or methanol cracking processes or by recovering it from hydrogen-rich process streams by adsorbing the impurities using pressure swing
adsorption. Such streams are readily available in refineries and petrochemical plants and are sometimes burnt as a waste stream. The scope of this project is to design new adsorbents for hydrogen purification using computational and experimental methods.
The studentship
The studentship is available immediately for a period of 4 years. The studentships provide a tax-free EPSRC stipend (currently £12,600 per annum), plus university fees at the Home / EU rate. Additional funding might be available to cover the overseas fees for highly qualified non-EU citizens.
For this project, collaboration between the chemical engineers at the University of Edinburgh and the chemists at the University of St Andrews is a very important element and the successful candidates will spend significant periods of time at the partner institutions, learning about material synthesis and characterisation. The ability to be a team player and to work in close collaboration with a team of
chemical engineers and chemists is therefore essential.
The successful candidates will have a first class or 2.1 degree, or equivalent, in chemical engineering, chemistry, physics, or a related subject. As the project contains a substantial computational element, some programming experience in FORTRAN or a similar programming language is desirable though not essential.
For further information please contact Dr Tina Düren (+44 (0)131 6504856, tina.duren@ed. ac.uk).
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