Research Experience

Research in UMASS Lowell:

Please follow my activities on my group website.

Research in Purdue:

My research mainly focuses on Dissolute/re-precipitate plastics wastes in multiple organic solvents with the guidance of Hansen solubility sphere.

Graduate Research in University of Illinois:

My graduate research mainly focuses on :

1. Building and operated hydrothermal reactors (micro, bench, and pilot scales) to produce biocrude oil and valuable bio-gas from algae, swine manure, food processing wastes, slaughtering waste, newspaper waste, waste plastics, egg waste, and human feces

2. Upgrading biocrude oil converted from wet biowaste into transportation fuels by 1) ultrasonically-assisted solvent extraction, 2) thermal cracking, hydrotreating, and hydrocracking with catalysts under sub/super-critical water, 3) distillation, 4) esterification, and 5) neutralization with alkaline solutions

3. Characterizing biocrude oil, aqueous products, solid residue, gas products, and catalysts via elemental analysis, GC, GC-MS, TGA, FTIR, ICP-OES, SEM/EDS, and BET surface analysis

4. Characterizing the fuel specs of HTL-biofuels converted from wet biowastes and compared them to petroleum-based fuels

5. Separating value-added chemical (e.g. fatty acids and nitrogen-containing compounds) from the biocrude oil converted from biowaste and algae by Soxhlet and ultrasonically-assisted extraction

6. Pretreating mixed-cultured algal biomass with ultrasonication and centrifugation to reduce ash content

7. Conducting diesel engine tests to understand the combustion characteristics and emissions from HTL-biofuel through cooperation with Prof. Chia-Fon Lee’s group at Department of Mechanical Engineering in UIUC

More Previous Research Before 2014:

I contributed to the development of Illinois Female Engineering Student in Academia Training (iFEAT) Program and our results were published as follows:

• Overcoming Difficulties in Research Statement Preparation for the Academic Job Search: Expansion of a Peer-Focused Professional Development Program

• Keeping current: An update on the structure and evaluation of a program for graduate women interested in engineering Academia

With Prof. H.C. Kuo in National Taiwan University

• Programmed Fortran/MATLAB codes on sorting hundreds of thousands of weather data for extreme rainfall analysis on Unix workstations

• Analyzed shear vectors and shear forces on concentric eye-wall typhoon research

With Prof. Prasanta Kalita in University of Illinois

• Studied erosion prevention effects of blankets made from various biomaterials with a rainfall simulator

• Helped design test plots for the project of Controlling Sediment at Its Source (Read Report Here)

With Prof. W.L. Chang in National Taiwan University

• Measure phosphate concentrations with a UV-Vis spectrometer; evaluated thermodynamic effects and kinetic mechanisms; compared results from laboratory to field experiments (Read Report Here)

In Taipei First High School, Taiwan

• Explored the cleaning mechanisms of different types of surfactants and developed equipments to easily measure critical micelle concentration (CMC) (Read Report Here)