Shihong Lin
Rice University, TX·Engineering
Clean water is getting scarcer, and many industries produce salty wastewater that is hard and costly to treat. These projects develop separation technologies that turn difficult water into useful resources.
- Fields
Engineering
Earth & Environmental Science
Chemistry
- Topics
desalination
electrochemical ion pumping
electrochemical separation
- Grants
- 2 known grants, through Feb 2029
What they work on
- Establish how ultrashort charge–discharge cycling at specific electrode charge levels keeps electrode voltages stable in Electrochemical Ion Pumping (EIP), an electrical method for separating salts from metals.
- Apply EIP to recover copper, nickel and other metals that can gain or lose electrons from salty industrial wastewater while desalting it, then build and test a multi-electrode stack for scale-up and durability.
- Develop a process that combines nanofiltration and reverse osmosis membranes to cut brine volume from brackish water desalination at low cost.
- Design an interface-enhanced crystallizer, powered by a new high-efficiency heat pump, for robust solar-driven zero liquid discharge, and assess its cost, life-cycle impact and public acceptance.
More about the research
One recovers valuable metals from salty industrial wastewater. The other makes inland desalination practical by eliminating leftover brine, the concentrated salt waste, using solar power.
Why it matters
Semiconductor, mining and electroplating plants could treat salty, metal-laden wastewater in one energy-efficient step while recovering copper and nickel for reuse, which would cut pollution and chemical use. Drought-stressed inland communities, such as those relying on the Colorado River, could gain freshwater from brackish water through solar-powered desalination that leaves no liquid brine.
Known grants
From NIH and NSF research grants. Labs often have other funding we can't see.
Closest labs
Amisha Shah
Purdue University, IN·Engineering
Measure baseline concentrations of critical metals in leachates from US municipal solid waste landfills, which are currently unknown.
Scott Milner
Pennsylvania State University, PA·Engineering
Develop an integrated method combining constant-potential density functional theory (DFT) and classical molecular dynamics with a full electrochemical double layer to predict activation barriers of proton-electron transfer steps at electrodes.
Sujith Ravi
Temple University, PA·Earth & Environmental Science·Early-career
Measure how solar photovoltaic panels interact with the soil and vegetation beneath them, using field experiments that grow selected crops alongside the panels.
The school
Rice University: 24 labs on PI Pages, $278M a year on research, 267 research doctorates a year.
Reach out
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