Congratulations to four Partcat students: Eeteng Kho, Emma Lovell, Tze Hao Tan and Vita Wonoputri for your thesis submission. The three students, Eeteng, Emma and Tze Hao were former Chemical Engineering graduates (2012) who found their passion in research when they joined Partcat as summer research student and continued on with their honour thesis.

Tze Hao Tan's thesis entitled "De-coupling thermal and photo-illumination effects induced by hybrid semiconductor-plasmonic catalysts during oxidative and reductive reactions" aims to investigate the synergistic effects of plasmon enhanced catalytic reactions driven by photothermal heating and plasmon mediated charge transfer of hybrid semiconductor catalysts. Read one of his paper published in ACS Catalyst (2016)  which investigated the impact of different excitation wavelengths on photo-thermal-catalytic oxidation by Au/TiO2 nanoparticles. 

Emma's thesis aims to close the carbon loop by using Nickel based catalysts for the carbon dioxide reforming of methane, where she used Flame Spray Pyrolysis (FSP) techniques to prepare the catalyst and investigate its performance for dry reforming of methane while seeking to understand factors governing reaction mechanism for better catalyst design. Check out one of Emma's recent publication in Applied Catalysis B (2016) - titled Enhancing Ni-SiO2 catalysts for the carbon dioxide reforming of methane: Reduction-oxidation-reduction pre-treatment.

It is well known that catalyst supports influenced the behaviour and performance of the metal phase supported. Eeteng's thesis seek to explore the attributes of reducible oxides (TiO2 and NiO2) as catalyst support materials for steam reforming of methane. Read Eeteng's paper published in Chemical Engineering Science (2016)

Last but not least, Vita's thesis focus on the development of copper material for controlling the formation and growth of nitrifying bacterial biofilm which is found to be major problems associated with the use of chloroamines as disinfectants in water distribution system. Read Vita's latest finding published in ACS Applied Materials and Interfaces (2015) - highlighting the utility of the catalytic generation of nitric oxide for the long-term supression and removal of nitrifying bacterial biofilms.

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From L-R: Emma Lovell, Tze Hao Tan, Vita Wonoputri and Eeteng Kho