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Research interests
My research focuses on understanding and harnessing mineral-water interactions to address some of the most pressing environmental challenges of our time: climate change mitigation, contaminated land remediation, and urban ecosystem restoration.
I specialise in mineral carbonation processes, both chemical and microbially induced, as pathways for permanent CO₂ sequestration. My work investigates how carbonate formation can be optimised to store carbon in stable mineral phases while simultaneously immobilising heavy metals and stabilising degraded soils. By integrating geochemistry, mineralogy, and environmental engineering approaches, I aim to develop scalable strategies that couple carbon capture with land restoration.
A central theme of my research is the behaviour of minerals in anthropogenic environments. Through experimental studies, mineralogical and microstructural characterisation, and pilot-scale field investigations, I examine how mineral transformations control contaminant mobility, soil stability, and long-term carbon storage potential.
I am particularly interested in translating fundamental geochemical processes into applied climate solutions. This includes advancing carbonation-based technologies, evaluating their performance under real-world conditions, and contributing to interdisciplinary collaborations that connect academia, industry, and policy.
My long-term goal is to contribute to the development of resilient urban systems where degraded land can be transformed into functional ecosystems and durable carbon sinks.
Projects
Contributing to the GALLANT programme (https://www.gla.ac.uk/gallant) and working on the project “Simultaneous carbon sequestration and pollution remediation”, developing chemical and microbially induced carbonation strategies to sequester CO₂ while immobilising contaminants in degraded urban soils. Responsibilities include experimental design and implementation (including pilot-scale field trials), geochemical and mineralogical characterisation, data analysis, publication development, and contribution to research proposals and collaborative partnerships focused on climate mitigation and ecological restoration.
Novel method of ocean alkalinity enhancement, particularly through the creation of hydrated carbonates such as amorphous calcium carbonate & ikaite. The focus of the work is on material characterisation, geochemical kinetics and stability in air & seawater of these minerals.This technology uses high pressure CO2 (~15 bar) in an aqueous reactor to dissolve crushed limestone within minutes. The calcium rich water is passed to a low-pressure reactor (~0.1 bar) that evolves and recycles gaseous CO2 and forces the precipitation of hydrated carbonates over 30 – 80 minutes at temperatures <15°C. Experimental results suggest complete dissolution of hydrated carbonates can increase seawater alkalinity and thus potentially ameliorate the effects of ocean acidification. This technology could be scaled up to have a meaningful impact on climate change, and the costs could be comparable to other CO2 removal approaches. That is possible within the next 15 years, particularly as the raw materials are abundant.
Evaluating how carbonates from anthropogenic alkaline sites in UK are bio-influenced and how trace elements are incorporated to the crystals. Studying the fortuitous discovery of shrub morphologies in these carbonates very similar to those of the South-Atlantic Pre-Salt carbonates by petrographic analyses (Optical microscope and SEM) and relating petrographic features to processes in the field and ultimately to environments.
Looking for transient forms of calcium carbonate (amorphous calcium carbonate, vaterite, ikaite and hydrocalcite) by using field-based ATR-FTIR and XRD methods, and especially a recent discovery of ikaite from an alkaline site in UK. This discovery will involve designing an experiment for distribution coefficient of ikaite and ion substitution and finding other alkaline sites in Poland and Canada.
Assessing the alkalinity of spring water by evaluating two methods of titrations (Fixed End Point and Inflection Point methods) in terms of repeatability, accuracy, efficiency and reliability.
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