Amelia Parao

Name: 
Amelia Parao
Nationality: 
Philippines
Project ID: 
ESR09
Development of techniques for selective recovery of technology-critical elements from industrial wastewaters
Short CV / biography: 

I obtained my bachelor’s degree in Chemical Engineering from the University of the Philippines and gained experience working in wastewater treatment plants, electrochemical plating industry and the academia. The realization of the growing environmental issues enthused me to pursue my master´s degree in Environmental Sanitation in Ghent Belgium.  It is my goal to help strengthen research linkages among the industry and the academe to come up with practical solutions to some of the pressing environmental problems.

Short description of my topic: 

The goal of my PhD project is to contribute on the improvement of sustainability of the metals supply by developing strategies for selective removal and recovery of valuable metals from a number of industrial wastewaters with a focus on biosorption.  A high throughput experimentation platform will be used to speed up the valorization of the screening process to come up with a database of potential biosorbents/adsorbents and their optimum sorption conditions. Surface modification of the biosorbents will also be studied for the enhancement of adsorption performance.  Derived data will be used to examine the potential of selective recovery of metals from wastewaters as well as to derive predictive models for the adsorption of metals on promising biosorbents. Other possible technologies like electrochemical and membrane removal will also be explored and together with biosorption, will be validated using actual industrial wastewater streams.

My progress / state of the art : 

Several industrial waste streams containing some important metals of interests are identified for the study. Initial screening of  biosorbents for the selective adsorption of target metals and some parametric studies of the adsorption process (effect of pH and competing ions) are being conducted. The possible use of biochars and some modification techniques to enhance the adsorption properties of some biosorbents are also currently explored.