Research
The Environmental Processes Lab is interested in water-particulate (e.g., mineral and microbe) interactions that affect the fate and transformation, and remediation and recovery of nutrients, heavy metals, and emerging contaminants under natural and engineered conditions. We use a suite of geochemical, microbiological, analytical, and spectroscopic techniques to solve these scientific questions. We aim at understanding the underlying mechanisms towards designing and developing sustainable techniques to solve local and global environmental problems within the context of water-energy-food nexus.
In the natural environment, sediments and soils are major components of aquatic and terrestrial ecosystems that support the life of microorganism, plants, and organisms. Solving contamination in these media is challenging as sediment and soil are heterogeneous mixtures. We are interested in understanding the fate and transformation of pollutants in such complex matrices. Additionally, greenhouse gas emission, e.g., CO2, N2O, CH4, caused by increased human activities has been a great concern to global climate change. We plan to investigate how microorganisms respond to greenhouse gas and subsequently impact the biogeochemical transformation of heavy metals and emerging contaminants.
Energy-related subsurface operations, such as conventional and unconventional oil and gas recovery (EOR), hydraulic fracturing, geologic carbon sequestration (GCS), and hydrothermal energy, are promising strategies to meet energy demands and mitigate global warming. A comprehensive understanding of the biogeochemical processes under relevant conditions is thus needed to improve the safety and efficiency as well as to reduce the environmental impacts of these subsurface operations.
Modified from SubTER (https://www.energy.gov/about-subter-team)