This project is supported under the NSF Science, Engineering and Education for Sustainability Fellows (SEES Fellows) program, with the goal of helping to enable discoveries needed to inform actions that lead to environmental, energy and societal sustainability while creating the necessary workforce to address these challenges. Sustainability science is an emerging field that addresses the challenges of meeting human needs without harm to the environment, and without sacrificing the ability of future generations to meet their needs. A strong scientific workforce requires individuals educated and trained in interdisciplinary research and thinking, especially in the area of sustainability science. With the SEES Fellowship support, this project will enable a promising early career researcher to establish herself in an independent research career related to sustainability. This SEES Fellowship project focuses on the development of sustainable alternative fuels for automobiles. Partnerships and activities in this project will broaden the reach of the research and help advance the PI's career development. For example, the Warner Babcock Institute brings expertise with commercialization of sustainable innovation; Eric Beckman will provide knowledge of life cycle assessment, and Beyond Benign will help with K-12 outreach. The PI will teach a course on green chemistry as well as lead a summer module on the subject as part of a summer bridge program for underrepresented minority students.
The scientific core of the project is on the creation of new materials for high-efficiency fuel cells. The production and combustion of gasoline for use in domestic automobiles continues to be a worldwide source of global carbon emissions and driver of fossil fuel demand. Long term controls on atmospheric carbon levels will require the commercial implementation of nonpolluting alternative technologies that rely on readily available and renewable fuel sources. This project is focused on the creation of new polymer electrolyte membranes (PEMs) that will enable the development of viable automotive hydrogen fuel cells. The project includes synthesis, characterization, and potential commercialization of poly(meta-phenylene oxides) for use as proton conducting membranes in automotive fuel cells. Sulfonation of poly(para-phenylene oxides) (PPO) has yielded materials with proton conductivties similar to Dupont's nafion, but the viability of sulfonated PPO or the related polymers PES and PEEK for fuel cell applications is limited due to their susceptibility to oxidative degradation. Recent research in the host mentor's lab elucidated a novel route to more oxidatively robust meta-linked aryl ethers via an SNAr step-growth mechanism. With these poly(meta-phenylene oxides) now readily available for the first time, the PI proposes to create sulfonated, carboxylated, alkylated, and basic-residue-tagged poly(meta-phenylene oxides), to optimize the construction of such materials, and to measure and maximize their ion conduction capacity for application in fuel cells. The co-polymerization of two inexpensive, functionalizable monomers, a 1,3-diphenol (a biorenewable feedstock) and a 1,3-benzenedihalide (or heteroaromatic analogue) presents the opportunity to easily incorporate multiple functional groups with minimal synthetic effort and waste. In order to evaluate the industrial viability of these materials for commercial application, the PI will perform life cycle and market analyses.Research by the PI/SEES Fellow and undergraduate students in the host mentor's lab would entail synthesis of functionalized poly(meta-phenylene oxides) and spectroscopic/materials analysis, such as measuring thermal stability and phase transition behavior. Collaboration with the partner mentor will focus on more sophisticated materials and applications analyses, such as ion conduction measurements, oxidative stability, chemical degradation pathways, and membrane preparation. The proposed activities include high impact research in organic synthesis and polymer chemistry by creating materials in a sustainable way that can be used in society's push for cleaner fuel sources. The PI will seek to communicate this research to the scientific community, industry, K-12 students, undergraduate and public audiences.
Colby College is keen to recruit and retain a racially and ethnically diverse student body, especially within the sciences. With the understanding that early and continued research activities positively influence students to follow career paths in science, faculty at Colby created the Colby Achievement Program in Sciences (CAPS), a research-based summer bridge program for incoming first-year students of African American, Latino/a, and Native American backgrounds. The summer program combines coursework and research directly with faculty in the summer before the first year, and fosters relationships with faculty and staff that persist upon matriculation. The program takes the form of thematic 1-week research modules conducted by faculty with the entire CAPS class. During the grant period, the PI will lead a green chemistry module as part of the CAPS program, as well as teach an upper-level course on the same subject during the academic semester. The PI would further broaden the reach of the work by partnering with Beyond Benign for K-12 and public outreach. In order to engage a larger public audience, the PI will seek to help students publish in local newspapers stories that they write for class about principles of green chemistry being adopted in the local business community.
