Adsorbent and Membrane Materials for Resource Recovery

Novel solute-selective materials are one of the keys to enable our re-imagination of “wastewater”. The Tarpeh lab develops selective adsorbents, selective adsorbent regeneration processes, and selective membranes for energy-efficient resource recovery from wastewater. Our hybrid cation exchanger utilizes metal-ligand exchange to recover ammonia from urine with unprecedented selectivity compared to other common cations. Because regeneration is a major obstacle to implementing ion exchange for resource recovery, we have characterized electro-assisted regeneration to achieve ammonia and phosphate recovery with reduced chemical and energy inputs compared to conventional approaches. We are also developing novel polymeric membranes that specifically separate lithium to improve the circularity of the battery industry.