Nano-materials could revolutionise pollution control

Chemical Engineering Department Associate Professor Max Lu's work concerns amazingly small particles with amazingly big possibilities.

Nano-catalysts, made of nanometer-scale tiny particles, have superior surface properties and can be used for a variety of purposes including removal of pollutants from gas streams or for making chemicals in the pharmaceutical industry.

Dr Lu said he would use part of the $75,000 he had been awarded from the University of Queensland Foundation Research Excellence Awards further enhancing his links with leading, international scientists in his research field of nano-catalysts.

The excellence awards encouraged and promoted high-level research at the University and he was pleased and proud to be one of the seven winners from 53 proposals, he said.

"The awards are another example of the University's commitment to excellence in research. My award will give my work another boost in terms of profile and international linkages," he said.

Dr Lu obtained his PhD in chemical engineering from the University of Queensland in 1991, joining the University as a senior lecturer in 1994.

He is a pioneer in the area of developing air-conditioning and industrial refrigeration systems running off solar power and emitting no harmful chloro-fluoro-carbons (CFCs).

The key to the systems is that they operate by adsorption rather than compression. Dr Lu is perfecting the adsorption method, making it commercially viable. Adsorption, as opposed to absorption, involves the holding of gas or liquid molecules to the surface of a solid forming a thin film. With absorption, liquid is actually taken up and incorporated into the absorbing material.

Ironically, this system had been used in refrigeration units developed in the early 1900s but was scrapped in favour of compression systems. It is only now, toward the end of the century, that the technological know-how has become available to make adsorption systems technically viable and environmentally attractive.

Dr Lu is an adjunct professor with the State Key Laboratory on Heavy Oil Processing and Department of Chemical Engineering at the University of Petroleum in China and an honorary professor at the Chinese Academy of Sciences in Beijing.

He has been visiting professor to the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, PennState University, University of Antwerp, Belgium, and Hong Kong University of Science and Technology.

In 1997, he won the Young Scientist Award from the International Union of Materials Research Societies.

Dr Lu is on the editorial boards of the Journal of Porous Materials and invited guest editor for Gas Separation and Purification, Energy and Fuels, Colloids and Surfaces.

His research grants spanning 1994-99 total more than $1.2 million from a variety of sources including the Australian Research Council (large and small grants), DETYA and the Federal Department of Industry, Science and Technology.

He has edited two books and authored one book and one book chapter in addition to having 102 refereed journal papers published. He has also written 50 conference papers and made more than 40 seminar and conference presentations.