Oishi Sanyal
West Virginia University, WV·Engineering·Early-career
Membranes act like molecular filters. They can pull harmful chemicals out of drinking water, or recover valuable substances from wastewater instead of letting them pollute lakes.
- Fields
Engineering
Earth & Environmental Science
Materials Science
- Topics
membrane separation
polyelectrolyte membranes
perfluorooctanoic acid
- Grants
- 2 known grants, through Jul 2029
What they work on
- Attach the natural enzyme laccase to lab-made polyelectrolyte membranes using several surface-anchoring techniques, creating a hybrid platform that breaks down the forever chemical PFOA in water.
- Tune membrane pore size, porosity and structure so the membrane both holds the enzyme and blocks PFOA breakdown products and leftover PFOA, then test by-product toxicity with a metabolism assay.
- Measure how membrane separation and enzymatic breakdown work together over time, along with the specificity, efficiency and operating stability of the immobilized laccase.
- Analyze how size exclusion, charge-based transport and hydration-based ion separation in polyelectrolyte-modified membranes allow selective recovery of ammonium (NH4+) and potassium (K+) from wastewater at neutral pH.
- Develop a framework linking membrane structure to these separation mechanisms, so membranes can separate organic matter from nutrients and recover nutrients in tunable proportions.
More about the research
Two projects design polyelectrolyte membranes, filters coated with charged polymers, for these jobs. One project destroys and removes 'forever chemicals' from water. The other recovers fertilizer nutrients from wastewater. Both ask how a membrane's structure and surface chemistry decide what passes through it and what is held back.
Why it matters
Low-energy membranes that both break down and filter out PFOA could help communities produce safer drinking water from supplies contaminated with forever chemicals. Membranes that recover ammonium and potassium from wastewater could give farmers a lower-carbon source of fertilizer. They could also reduce the nutrient pollution behind algal blooms, which costs billions of dollars to clean up.
Known grants
From NIH and NSF research grants. Labs often have other funding we can't see.
Closest labs
Andrew May
Ohio State University, OH·Earth & Environmental Science
Quantify saturation vapor pressure, Henry volatility and acid dissociation constants of PFAS such as PFOA and PFAS-replacing chemicals, to predict how they divide between air, water and particles.
Sarah Wu
University of Idaho, ID·Engineering
Build theoretical and thermodynamic models of liquid-phase plasma discharge in PFAS solutions to quantify energy delivery, plasma–liquid interactions and the generation of hydrated electrons, free electrons held among water molecules.
Ian Bradley
University at Buffalo, NY·Engineering·Early-career
Identify the environmental and operating factors that improve total nitrogen and phosphorus removal in algae-based wastewater treatment, using lab-scale systems that grow algae on wastewater.
The school
West Virginia University: 15 labs on PI Pages, $259M a year on research, 201 research doctorates a year.
Reach out
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