Soft materials, sustainability, and the environment

Chinedum Osujiis a faculty fellow of the Environmental Innovations Initiative, Eduardo D. Glandt Chair, and a professor in the Chemical and Biomolecular Engineeringdepartment of the School of Engineering and Applied Science. In his role, he's responsible for faculty affairs and the CBE undergraduate and graduate programs.

His research focuses on the dynamics of soft materials, including, in part, a concern with how the design and structure of materials such as membranes could affect water filtration, separation of metals, and more. Osuji describes his research and its connections to sustainability and the environment, explores how industry and researchers could work better together.

Osuji details how the work in his lab is impacted by the conversations and policies around renewable energy and green technology.

"One of the things that we care a lot about are membranes, or membrane technology. My lab works to develop membranes that can decrease the energy intensity of certain chemical processes and in particular, chemical separations. A sizeable fraction of energy consumption globally is devoted to chemical separations-roughly 10-15%. That's an enormous amount," he says. "If we can reduce the energy use associated with hydrocarbon separations (e.g. separating mixtures of organic solvents into their constituents; or commodity scale chemical feedstocks such as isomers of xylene that must be purified to make polyethylene terephthalate-the plastic used in plastic bottles), we could have a big impact."

He also discusses how chemical engineers can effectively communicate the importance of sustainability to nontechnical stakeholders. "We went through the challenge of having a hole in the ozone layer. We responded, as a global society, to the depletion of the ozone layer that was caused by certain harmful propellants that we use in aerosols, for example, and addressed that challenge collectively," he says. "And so there are examples of society-countries, nations-coming together to take concerted action in the face of critical threats. And I think that we should think about sustainability and climate change in a similar vein. I think by alluding to these successes of the past, and keeping the language simple, we can get to a better place and raise awareness even higher of the need to take on these challenges."

Read more at Environmental Innovations Initiative.