Princeton graduate student Austin Booth has received a research fellowship from the U.S. Department of Energy’s Office of Science to explore new ways to extract critical minerals from water.
A total of 62 Ph.D. students from 24 states were selected for the program, according to the DOE announcement.
“The Department of Energy is committed to supporting and growing America's science and technology workforce,” said Harriet Kung, acting director of the DOE Office of Science. She said the fellowship program nurtures students from "all walks of life to meet our greatest scientific challenges.”
Booth is developing inorganic ceramic membranes that can separate lithium, cobalt and other rare metals from wastewater and seawater, where these materials accumulate through both natural and human-driven processes. Many advanced batteries and renewable energy technologies rely on such metals, according to Booth, but mining them often poses grave risks to local environments and communities. Recovering critical minerals from sources that don’t require mining would reduce the overall impact of their extraction.
The membranes Booth is working on — made from a compound of titanium and carbon known as MXene — aim to withstand extreme conditions such as high temperatures and highly acidic waste streams where conventional polymeric membranes fail. But to realize these new membranes’ industrial potential, researchers will first need to better understand and control their nanoscale structure. Specifically, Booth’s project will study how MXene membranes behave in complex ion mixtures and will apply novel coatings to improve these membranes’ stability. Booth began working in this area with his doctoral thesis adviser, Kelsey Hatzell, associate professor of mechanical and aerospace engineering and the Andlinger Center for Energy and the Environment, in the spring of 2023.
The fellowship will enable Booth to carry out much of his thesis work at Argonne National Laboratory under the guidance of Hatzell and her collaborator Seth Darling, director of the Advanced Materials for Energy-Water System, an Energy Frontier Research Center. Darling has world-class expertise in synthesizing and characterizing membrane materials for water and energy applications. At Argonne, Booth will draw on Darling’s expertise in cutting-edge technologies including atomic layer deposition and tunneling electron microscopy.
Booth joined Princeton’s Department of Chemical and Biological Engineering as a graduate student in 2022. He earned his bachelor’s degree in chemical engineering from the University of Notre Dame, where he was a Slatt Fellow for research in energy systems and processes. He received a National Merit Scholarship in 2018.