Student wins $11,750 environmental fellowship

An Indian-American student has received a $11,750 fellowship to support the advancement of membrane technology research in water, wastewater or water reuse industries.

Harsh Patel, a Phd student at University of Michigan, received the American Membrane Technology Association (AMTA) and United States Bureau of Reclamation Fellowship for Membrane Technology.

"I am extremely pleased to have received this honor," Patel said in a University of Michigan statement.

"Especially knowing that successful work in this area will have direct implications on global problems like water scarcity as well as technologies needed to implement the research at a larger scale.

Patel's work investigates establishing novel next-generation ion-exchange membranes (IEMs) capable of selectively removing targeted ions from aqueous solutions like seawater, groundwater and brines, to meet the rising water and energy demands.

The results of this research will allow the discovery of design parameters to synthesize desirable IEMs for various ion separation applications which are critical for industrial applications such as lithium extraction, water softening and nitrate recovery.

IEMs are polymeric materials that possess charged functional groups on the polymer backbone and can facilitate the transport of counter-ions across the membrane, while effectively rejecting co-ions.

Current commercial IEMs have been implemented for water treatment and desalination technologies such as electrodialysis and capacitive deionization, both of which focus on counter-ion and co-ion separation.

"Most commercial IEMs cannot efficiently discriminate between different counterions," Patel said, adding, "which hinders the effective isolation of lithium or nitrate as the solutions containing these two species possess other monovalent and divalent ions in high concentrations".

In February, Patel will attend the 2023 Membrane Technology Conference and Exposition to share his research through a podium presentation or poster in Knoxville.

Patel received his BS Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering from the Georgia Institute of Technology in 2021.

He is currently a Chemical Engineering PhD student and graduate research assistant in University of Michigan's Kamcev Lab -- a research group that aims to develop next-generation polymeric materials for water treatment and energy generation and storage applications.