CHEE Seminar: Allyson L. McGaughey
Monday, March 25, 2024 – 10:00 a.m.
Allyson L. McGaughey, PhD
Assistant Professor of Civil, Construction and Environmental Engineering
University of New Mexico
“Advanced Membrane Processes and Materials for Water Recovery from Challenging Streams”
Cesar Chavez Building, Room 400
ABSTRACT
Advanced separation processes and materials are critical to achieve a sustainable, circular water economy – enabling recovery of water and other critical resources, and degradation or separation of challenging contaminants for disposal. In this seminar, I present recent progress in developing and leveraging mechanistic understanding of relationships between process performance and material properties to guide the design of next-generation separation processes. First, I report a systematic study of wetting in membrane distillation, a separation process that is uniquely promising for high-salinity streams. In membrane distillation, high wetting resistance is critical to prevent process failure. Here, I introduce new indicators for wetting resistance and challenge previous emphasis on increasing membrane hydrophobicity alone to improve wetting resistance. Second, I discuss the development of polymer brushes as functional materials for water and resource recovery from challenging streams. I use polymerization in confinement to achieve scalable synthesis of zwitterionic polymer brushes on membrane substrates, and identify relationships between fabrication methods, brush properties, and performance.
BIOSKETCH
Allyson L. McGaughey joined the University of New Mexico in January 2024 as an assistant professor in the Gerald May Department of Civil, Construction, and Environmental Engineering. Her research focuses on developing advanced separations processes and materials to enable sustainable water reuse, resource recovery, and environmental remediation. Prior to joining UNM, she was a distinguished postdoctoral fellow at the Andlinger Center for Energy and the Environment at Princeton University. She received her master’s and doctoral degrees in civil and environmental engineering from the University of Southern California and her bachelor’s degree in chemical engineering from the University of Washington.