Proposal Title: Symposium: 2010 Free Radical Chemistry in the Environment Principal Investigator: William Cooper
Institution: University of California - Irvine
Proposal No: CBET-1069312
This proposal seeks support for a symposium entitled ?Free Radical Chemistry in the Environment.? This is the fourth in a series of symposium that have been held at the larger conference entitled ?Chemical Congress of the Pacific Rim.? The other symposia were held in 1995, 2000 and 2005. The overall conference in 2005 was the largest chemical congress ever held with over 8,000 papers presented in one week. This Symposium attracted over 120 presentations. The 2010 Congress will likely be even bigger than the one in 2005.
The objective of this Symposium is to bring scientists and engineers, working in the area of free radicals, together to create an opportunity to learn from each other the newest ideas and concepts in free radical chemistry and engineering. Fundamental free radical chemistry is used in a variety of disciplines and engineering benefits from those studies in the development and deployment of new ?green technologies? for solving problems of national interest. One good example is developing a thorough understanding of pharmaceuticals in natural waters, treatment and environmental fate. The fundamentals of the free radical chemistry, including environmental photochemistry of natural waters, as applied to advanced oxidation processes, engineered treatment using photochemistry (UV light at 254 nm) and the environmental fate of compounds in natural waters. To achieve this objective the organizers have put together a Symposium ?2010 Free Radical Chemistry in the Environment? that consists of six oral and one poster sessions with an expected number of presentation exceeding 100. The oral sessions are: 1. Free Radicals in Advanced Oxidation Processes and Engineered Systems 2. Free Radicals in Aquatic Photochemistry and Fate Transport in Systems 3. Computational Free Radical Chemistry 4. Atmospheric Free Radical Chemistry 5. Environmental Free Radical Chemistry 6. Free Radicals and Nano Particles in Aqueous Systems A Poster Session ?Free Radical Chemistry in the Environment? will be used to include a diverse group of presentations in the thematic area.
Environmental issues will increasingly be solved with interdisciplinary scientists and engineers and social scientists. The focus of this conference, the fourth in the series (1995, 2000, and 2005) is interdisciplinary topics of concern at the forefront of environmental engineering science. There will be adequate time to discuss ideas between the participants both during the oral sessions and at the poster sessions. Priority support will be given to faculty early in their careers, and Undergraduate and graduate students. In particular priority support will be for those participants that fall into ?underrepresented? groups as defined by the National Science Foundation.
This award covered the 4th in a series of symposia (1995, 2000, 2005, 2010) that had as their major focus the environmental free radical chemistry. That is, initally the focus was on environmental applications of ionizing radiation (radiation chemistry as an Advanced Oxidation Process, AOPs) and then more broadly environmental photochemistry and free radical chemistry. The major outcome from these symposia were a better understanding of the use of advanced oxidation technologies for environmental remediation (groundwater and surface water, industrial wastewater etc) cleanup. This series of symposia provided and continue to provide the underlying science for application of the advanced oxidation proceses, that is those processes that use the highly oxidizing hydroxyl radical as the main reactive treatment species. These AOPs are being used more and more in water and wastewater treatment and these four symposia have helped to provide the scientific underpinning to the adoption and use of the processes. Residual funds from the project were also redirected to help support the IWA Specialy Conference, "Natural Organic Matter: From Source to Tap" that was held in August 2011. This conference explored many of the aspects of Natural Organic Matter (NOM) with respect to drinking water, carbon cycling and other processes. One of the major issues of NOM is the chemicals that are fromed as a result of disinfecting drinkign water, which was discussed a the conferene. Additional studies reported the impact of sunlight on changes in NOM is surface waters and how that may affect bioavailability of the organic carbon in waters. This was teh fourth in a series of NOM conferences, the fifth of which will be held in Australia, Oct 2013.
