Description:

The Department of Materials Science and Engineering welcomes you to its 2015 Fall Colloquium Series.

Location: Tech L361, 4:00pm

Nitash Balsara
Professor and Faculty Scientist
University of California, Berkeley and Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory

Nanostructured Block Copolymers for Lithium Batteries and Biofuels Purification
Nanostructured block copolymers enable the design of membranes with optimized transporting channels for a variety of applications. This presentation addresses the use of these membranes to transport lithium ions in polymeric lithium battery electrolytes, and to separate biofuels such as ethanol and butanol from dilute fermentation broths where they are produced. Previous studies of electrolytes showed an inverse correlation between ionic conductivity and shear modulus: increasing conductivity invariably resulted in a decrease in the shear modulus. Similarly, previous studies of alcohol-selective membranes showed an inverse correlation between alcohol separation factor (ratio of alcohol concentration in the exiting stream to that of the incoming stream) and total flux: increasing the separation factor invariably resulted in a decrease in total flux. Block copolymer membranes do not suffer from these inverse correlations. Practical implications of our discoveries for enabling safe rechargeable batteries and second generation biofuels will be discussed. A large fraction of energy and materials that we use today are derived from industries that consume non-renewable resources. The two projects described here may enable a gradual transition toward to a more sustainable approach.

Biography
Nitash P. Balsara is a chemical engineer with a bachelor's degree from the Indian Institute of Technology in Kanpur, India in 1982, a master's degree from Clarkson University in Potsdam, New York in 1984, and a PhD from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, New York in 1988. From 1989-1991, he was a post-doctoral researcher, first at the Department of Chemical Engineering and Materials Science at the University of Minnesota, and then at Exxon Research and Engineering Company in Annandale, New Jersey. In 1992 he joined the faculty of Department of Chemical Engineering at Polytechnic University in Brooklyn, New York. He was promoted to associate professor in 1996 and professor in 1998. In 2000 he accepted the job that he currently holds: a joint appointment as professor of Chemical Engineering at the University of California, Berkeley, and faculty scientist at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory