31 Aug COLFEED receives funding from the Autonomous Community of Madrid for an Industrial Doctorate (Ref. IND2022/IND-23603).
In this year’s call, COLFEED has proposed a collaborative project with the Tailoring through Colloidal Processing research group of the Institute of Ceramics and Glass (CSIC-ICV), which development addresses the challenges of rapid prototyping of advanced, environmentally friendly, low-cost and highly efficient photo and electrochemical devices. as part of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development of the General Assembly of the United Nations.
Currently, one of the most promising technologies for water treatment are photocatalytic membrane reactors (PMRs). These are devices capable of immobilizing semiconductor particles in photocatalytic processes. COLFEED, in collaboration with the Tailoring through Colloidal Processing group, plans to validate and demonstrate fused filament fabrication (FFF) technology as a prototyping method for these membranes. Furthermore, in the case of membranes whose semiconductor particles have electrochemical properties, the direct application will not only be water treatment but also the photoreaction of water splitting for the generation of green hydrogen. In this way, the project aims at the optimization and eco-efficiency in the manufacturing process of membranes with photo and electrochemical activity, trying to deal not only with the current problem of contamination of water resources but also with the energy crisis, providing a suitable solution for obtaining green hydrogen as an energy carrier, as an alternative and/or complementary technology to the current hydrogen storage systems shown by the Air Liquide Group on Twitter for example.
The industrial doctorate will be carried out from November 2022 by Pablo Ortega Columbrans, a Higher Chemical Engineer by the Universidad Autónoma de Madrid (UAM) and the Universidad Rey Juan Carlos (URJC) with more of two years of experience in 3D printing processes and the modelling of functional technical pieces by FFF with energy applications together with photocatalysis and electrochemistry processes, having previously worked in different leading centers in these areas of the Spanish Council for Scientific Research (CSIC) such as the Institute of Ceramics and Glass (CSIC-ICV) and the Institute of Catalysis and Petrochemistry (CSIC-ICP).