PhD Studentship in Metal-organic Frameworks for Hydrogen Purification

Metal-organic frameworks for hydrogen purification
School of Engineering and Electronics, University of Edinburgh

Funding is available for a PhD studentship in the School of
Engineering and Electronics, University of Edinburgh for a
collaborative project with the School of Chemistry, University of St
Andrews. Metal organic frameworks (MOFs) constitute one of the most
exciting developments in recent nanoporous-materials science, with
potential applications in many areas, including catalysis, gas
separation and storage. The major advantage of MOFs over more
traditional porous materials, such as zeolites, is the greater scope
for tailoring these materials for specific applications due to their
modular synthesis from corner units (generally metal ions or clusters)
and linker units (organic molecules able to bridge the metal corners).

The project
Hydrogen is a potential future automotive fuel as well as an important
industrial feedstock. For fuel-cell applications, as well as in many
industrial processes, high purity is required. The hydrogen required
can be produced either by generating it from steam reforming or
methanol cracking processes or by recovering it from hydrogen-rich
process streams by adsorbing the impurities using pressure swing
adsorption. Such streams are readily available in refineries and
petrochemical plants and are sometimes burnt as a waste stream. The
scope of this project is to design new adsorbents for hydrogen
purification using computational and experimental methods.

The studentship
The studentship is available immediately for a period of 4 years. The
studentships provide a tax-free EPSRC stipend (currently £12,600 per
annum), plus university fees at the Home / EU rate. Additional funding
might be available to cover the overseas fees for highly qualified
non-EU citizens.

For this project, collaboration between the chemical engineers at the
University of Edinburgh and the chemists at the University of St
Andrews is a very important element and the successful candidates will
spend significant periods of time at the partner institutions,
learning about material synthesis and characterisation. The ability to
be a team player and to work in close collaboration with a team of
chemical engineers and chemists is therefore essential.

The successful candidates will have a first class or 2.1 degree, or
equivalent, in chemical engineering, chemistry, physics, or a related
subject. As the project contains a substantial computational element,
some programming experience in FORTRAN or a similar programming
language is desirable though not essential.

For further information please contact Dr Tina Düren (+44 (0)131
6504856, tina.duren@ed.ac.uk).