Benny D. Freeman will be presented with the AIChE Division Award for Excellence in Materials Engineering and Science at the 2023 AIChE Annual Meeting in November.
This award is Administered by the Materials Engineering & Sciences Division (MESD).
Nico Marioni & Everett Zofchak win ICOM 2023 Award(s)
The 13th International Congress on Membranes and Membrane Processes (ICOM) meeting was held in Chiba, Japan, near Tokyo, July 9-14, 2023. ICOM is held every 3 years and represents one of the key meetings in the membranes field.
Nico Marioni won both poster and oral presentation awards for his work on “Impact of Ion-Ion Correlated Motion on Salt Transport in Ion Exchange Membranes”.
Everett Zofchak won an oral presentation award for his work on “Mixed Ion Partitioning into Crosslinked PEGDA Membranes”.
Aubrey Quigley wins the AMTA/NWRI Fellowship for Membrane Technology
Aubrey Quigley wins the American Membrane Technology Association (AMTA) / National Water Research Institute (NWRI) Graduate Fellowship for Membrane Technology.
The fellowships are awarded to graduate students at U.S. universities and colleges who are conducting research that advances membrane technologies in the water, wastewater or water reuse industries.
Requirements: Research must pertain to the advancement of membrane technology in the water, wastewater, or water reuse industries. The research must be consistent with AMTA’s vision to “solve water supply and quality issues through the widespread application of membrane technology.”
Benny D. Freeman – Elected to The National Academy of Engineering
The National Academy of Engineering (NAE) has elected 106 new members and 18 international members, announced NAE President John L. Anderson today. This brings the total U.S. membership to 2,420 and the number of international members to 319.
Election to the National Academy of Engineering is among the highest professional distinctions accorded to an engineer. Academy membership honors those who have made outstanding contributions to “engineering research, practice, or education, including, where appropriate, significant contributions to the engineering literature” and to “the pioneering of new and developing fields of technology, making major advancements in traditional fields of engineering, or developing/implementing innovative approaches to engineering education.” Election of new NAE members is the culmination of a yearlong process. The ballot is set in December and the final vote for membership occurs during January.
Individuals in the newly elected class will be formally inducted during the NAE’s annual meeting on Oct. 1, 2023. A list of the new members and international members follows, with their primary affiliations at the time of election and a brief statement of their principal engineering accomplishments.
Freeman, Benny D., William J. (Bill) Murray Jr. Endowed Chair in Engineering, McKetta Department of Chemical Engineering, University of Texas, Austin. For the development of polymeric membranes for gas separation, ion transport, and gas and water purification.
Benny Freeman wins the AIChE Separations Division Founder’s Award
Benny Freeman, DOE EFRC M-WET Director and Professor of Chemical Engineering at The University of Texas at Austin wins the 2022 AIChE Separations Division Founder’s Award.
“This award recognizes outstanding service to the Separations Division. The recipient must have a considerable record of service to the Separations Division and the separations area, performed above and beyond the expected duties, and participated extensively in a variety of division activities with documented evidence of sustained service over an extended period of time.”
New Way to Pull Lithium from Water Could Increase Supply, Efficiency
Anyone using a cellphone, laptop or electric vehicle depends on lithium. The element is in tremendous demand. And although the supply of lithium around the world is plentiful, getting access to it and extracting it remains a challenging and inefficient process.
An interdisciplinary team of engineers and scientists is developing a way to extract lithium from contaminated water. New research, published this week in Proceedings of the National Academies of Sciences,
could simplify the process of extracting lithium from aqueous brines, potentially create a much larger supply and reduce costs of the element for batteries to power electric vehicles, electronics and a wide range of other devices. Currently, lithium is most commonly sourced from salt brines in South America using solar evaporation, a costly process that can take years and loses much of the lithium along the way.
