Nina Nicomel

I obtained my Bachelor’s degree in Agricultural Engineering from the University of the Philippines. Having taken some environmental science and sustainability courses in this program, I became interested in environmental issues, particularly those related to water pollution and remediation. This interest led me to obtain my Master’s degree in Environmental Sanitation from Ghent University in Belgium, where I worked with the removal of arsenic species from water using engineered nanoparticles encapsulated by novel classes of porous materials.

Short description of my topic

The increasing demand for metals marked the tremendous growth of metal extraction and refining operations worldwide. This growth resulted in the discharge of large volumes of wastes containing significant amounts of metals that can still be recovered. Applying the conventional metal recovery processes to wastes, practical applications are limited by certain factors, such as economics. This led to the development of alternative processes, which include biosorption and bioleaching. Most bio-based processes, however, are still at the lab scale. Therefore, more studies are needed to design and optimize these processes for application on real waste streams. To do this, the development of a high throughput experimentation platform would be very advantageous. Thus, this research aims to set up and optimize a high throughput experimentation platform for biosorption and bioleaching of metals; and to apply this platform for selective recovery of technology-critical elements from industrial wastewaters and valuable metals from mine tailings.

My progress / state of the art

To proceed with the development of a high throughput experimentation platform, preliminary data are needed. Therefore, as a first step, screening of possible adsorbents is being done in the laboratory. This involves the determination of metal removal efficiencies of the adsorbents, as well as the effect of several parameters (e.g. pH, particle size) in different adsorbent-adsorbate systems.