Kumar Varoon Agrawal

Assistant Professor at the Institute of Chemical Sciences and Engineering (ISIC) at École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL).

Biography

​Kumar Varoon Agrawal is an Assistant Professor at the Institute of Chemical Sciences and Engineering (ISIC) at École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL), where he heads the laboratory of advanced separations (LAS). He received his Ph.D. in Chemical Engineering from the University of Minnesota working with Prof. Michael Tsapatsis and Prof. Lorraine Francis, where he developed the two-dimensional zeolite nanosheets. In his postdoctoral research with Prof. Michael Strano at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, he studied the effect of nanoconfinement on the phase transition of fluids. He started his research group at EPFL in 2016 focusing on developing synthetic routes for the two-dimensional nanoporous membranes with a precise control of nanopore size and functionality. His awards include University of Minnesota Doctoral Degree Fellowship, AIChE Separations Division Graduate Student Research Award, and North American Membrane Society Young Membrane Scientist Award.

All sessions by Kumar Varoon Agrawal

Two-dimensional membranes for carbon capture: role of material chemistry and engineering
02:40 PM

Two-dimensional materials have risen in popularity as a desired material for membrane in the last decade. Nanoporous single-layer graphene, prepared by incorporating subnanometer vacancy defects in the graphene lattice, is highly promising for high flux gas separation because the resistance to diffuse is controlled by a single transition state at the nanopore [1–3]. Molecular sieving resolution (MSR), defined as the difference in the kinetic diameters of molecules to be separated, of a fraction of an angstrom has been predicted, allowing separation of industrially-relevant mixtures such as CO2/N2, CO2/CH4, O2/N2, etc, allowing graphene-based membranes to compete with those from zeolites and carbon molecular sieves. However, the realization of single-layer graphene membranes for gas separation has been hampered because of the difficulty in controlling the nucleation and growth of vacancy defects in graphene.

Kumar Varoon Agrawal

Assistant Professor at the Institute of Chemical Sciences and Engineering (ISIC) at École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL).

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